Anyway, Damien is here and he’s got his kit set up to one side of the stage where some other drums already are. Quincy (our fiddler) and Tem (bass) are outside smoking. Here’s a wicked story: Tem’s girlfriend Tanya, who is unbelievably hot (I mean I’m not that way or anything, but seriously…), well apparently she was at work today and getting loads of shit from her boss and she just stripped off her uniform, butt-naked in front of this woman, then put on her cycling gear and walks out of there. The whole office was watching and apparently they went crazy, clapping and singing like Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. Fucking great story, but Tem is flipping about her overdraft, plus you can see he didn’t much like Tanya getting naked in front of an office full of men. Got himself a handful there.
So, yeah, just waiting on Kenny.
It’s a love-hate thing, this time before a gig. On the one hand there’s all the nerves, like I said, but on the other, seeing the rest of the gang arriving to face the music by your side is an amazing thing. I mean, I love these guys better than my family, no question. They never probe into my private life or want to dig into my psychological background, they never let me down; we just share this common bond of music and it is as intimate and loving a bond as any I’ve ever had before. I love to get to a gig or rehearsal first, so I can see their faces showing up one by one, watching them interacting with each other – my family.
I leave another message for Kenny.
The other bands have all sound checked – nothing special. We get up and sound check, all half-hearted, but still sounding ten times better than the rest of them, and then head down to the main bar to get some food.
People start to show up in dribs and drabs and the apologies start pinging in by text. The promoter comes over all pleasant and makes small talk, which culminates with “Are you expecting many tonight?” Yes, plenty, blah.
Edgar (such a cool name) shows up and says he’s got something for me, which can only mean one thing. A month ago I asked Edgar to do a little background digging for an exposé I’m trying to do on this bent councillor who I’ve got a hunch is a kiddie fiddler. Bastard. Edgar would need to have found some seriously incendiary material to consider it a) too dangerous to email and b) worthy of him getting off his fat arse and leaving his room to bring to me in person. Wow indeed! He gives me a USB and tells me that on it is a taster, which I need to handle with care, and that he will call me tomorrow to discuss his percentage, but won’t divulge anything further. I ask him if he wants to chill for a bit and watch us play, but he laughs and says it’s not his scene and then he waddles out. Too cool for school, is Edgar.
We’re headlining tonight (damn straight) and the band before us go on and there’s still no word from Kenny. David finetunes his new string and then starts warming up his fingers with stretches over the fret board. Me and Tem do some Sumo stomping to let out some of the tension. Damien and Quincy are drinking pints like drought victims.
Kenny doesn’t show and we have to play without him. You can tell we all feel the gap. It’s not as bad as playing pool on your own, but they live at the same tube stop. We still kick some heavyweight arse, mind. If we were only half as good at promoting ourselves as we are at playing together, we’d be rolling in dosh by now.
Well there’s the promotion problem and then there’s the image issue as well. David arrived wearing a fucking cardigan tonight – thankfully with a black t-shirt underneath, but still. I’ve got this tiny tartan skirt, stockings and suspenders, heels, pigtails and china doll make-up, and David looks like Father Ted! The image is a real issue. If only we looked half as good as we sound – well, you know the rest.
Shame the music industry has got nothing to do with music.
We’re just about to launch into our final number when a long-haired suit from a table of three very drunk suits stands up and starts shouting for Alanis. His mates try to calm him down, but he thinks he’s funny and persists. Finally, one of the other two suits gets him in a headlock and they get feisty and red-faced. The third pulls them apart and the long-haired suit says, “It’s just a fucking skirt!” staring angrily at his co-suit. He takes his coat and leaves, talking loudly to himself as he does so. The other two make no attempt to follow him.
I look around at the guys and say, “‘21st Century Schizoid Man’?” They all beam with approval.
I hate to admit it, but the cover feels great. You can sense the excitement running through the whole band, the unique enjoyment of playing music that is both intensely familiar and yet completely novel. The guys tear the song to pieces, then cement it back together with wasabi, while I plough out the lyrics, stomping round the stage almost bent double like a penitent Christian. By the end, the whole bar is jumping. They want an encore, but they don’t get one.
As soon as we’re done, I step out to think about what it would be like to have a cigarette now. I’m sitting on the red step (the three steps into the side entrance to the club are white, black and red), which is the only dry step, and let my head come back into focus. The rain has stopped finally and through the gaps in the orange clouds I can see stars.
“Excuse me, I just wanted to say I thought that was really great.” She is plump, has ginger hair and is semi-suit with a cigarette – probably a Marlboro Light.
“OK,” I say and look away.
“… And sorry about the moron at the end.”
“You’ve got some choice friends,” I say, letting it drip.
“No, no, he’s not my friend – I just come here a lot and wouldn’t want you to be put off from playing here again. A friend of mine runs the place and he doesn’t get many good bands in, particularly gypsy punk.”
“Oh.” I’m starting to feel a bit uncomfortable for being so rude.
“Well anyway, thanks for the show and sorry for intruding.” She walks away. I want to say something, but the deed is done.
When I go back inside, Tanya and Tem are talking to the ginger woman, so I keep my distance. No-one else feels like sticking for a drink without Kenny around (who is still not answering), so I help Damien pack up and load his drums and then hit the road. I run and knock up a number 8 as he’s pulling away and the driver’s a rare ‘un and stops and lets me on, so I’m home watching the egg timer on my laptop with a falafel wrap and a black coffee on this side of 1am instead of after 2.
I’m thinking about the guys in the band and their happy faces when we played that cover and wondering if artistic integrity really is more important than just enjoying yourselves, when the flash drive opens itself up. As usual there’s a picture of a ram’s head superimposed onto the muscle bound body of a chunk with a pair of socks down his posing pouch. The ram’s jaw bobs up and down as a mixture of famous sci-fi movie voices, of which I recognise Darth Vader and Morpheus, proclaim: “You were right about the councillor, Izzy, more than you know. The rabbit hole goes deep on this one. I have covered my tracks, but I want guarantees for my complete anonymity before I hand over the payload. I want five thousand cash in unmarked bills on Monday morning and in return you get the councillor’s head on a platter. Do not mention any of the details from this message when I call tomorrow, just a yes for Monday and the five thousand, or a no and the story goes elsewhere. This message will self-destruct in five, four, three, two, one seconds… ” This, as usual, is followed by Edgar making various self-destruct noises and then playing some Rammstein music in the background – ‘Fueur Frei!’ – this time, which I don’t mind, so I let it roll.
Five thousand! Bloody hell, what’s he found? I munch on my falafel thoughtfully. Edgar is no more a hacker than I am, but he’s a good researcher when it comes to digging out the facts on industrial espionage cases. I usually pay him five hundred quid a pop for his research and maintain the artifice of his secret hacker double life, when he tells people about it at parties. Besides, I secretly enjoy the entry-level drama of his Mission Impossible messages. I’ve never asked him to dig the dirt on an individual before and to be honest hadn’t had high hopes that he�
��d come up with anything. I mean, apart from my lack of faith in his actual ability as a hacker, what do I have to go on? I’d gone to cover a children’s event at Greenwich Maritime Museum and seen the councillor picking up the kids and sitting them on his lap for the photos and I hadn’t liked it. That was it. He was hardly putting his hand up the little girl’s skirts.
But his face said he wanted to.
I’d seen a face like that before.
Shalwar
Elsa is on the first floor of a big house in the country and Scott is out in the garden with Ben and a girl she doesn’t know. Scott’s hair is all huge and dreadlocked, like it was in the photo taken in Thailand, and he’s wearing the baggy beige trousers that he bought in Peshawar, when he tried to sneak into Afghanistan. They are called shalwar and have a blue drawstring with tassels to secure them. She is knocking on the window to say hi but they can’t hear her. The three of them walk away from the house across a field and into some woods, chatting and happy and pushing each other around. After an interminable time of waiting, she sees the girl coming back out of the woods, closely followed by Ben. The girl is crying and Ben is angry and shouting at her. As they come nearer the house, she starts banging on the window again. Somehow she knows that they won’t hear and when they come into the house she won’t find them and Scott will be gone. They both come into the house and she’s left looking at the flaking paint of the window frame and the worm-holed wood beneath.
Now Elsa’s in the old bedroom. It’s dark outside but the light is on, stark and unshaded, as it always is. She is lying on the bed, back tight to the wall, looking across the telescopic crimson carpet to the top of the stairs in the opposite corner of the room. To the left of her view is the doorway, with no door, through which the unseen expanse of empty, dusty attic extends over the top of the stables and coach houses that silently circle the dark courtyard below.
In her head, she traces the route across the room: past the attic doorway, squinting ahead to fool her peripheral vision into not seeing the yawning black space to her left; down the stairs, weaving through the stacks of old Greek and Latin textbooks, pans, crockery and chairs, and out of the heavy door, into the moonlight cutting under the archway; barefoot skipping under the frosty shadow of the clock tower, over the courtyard, not once looking back at that heavy door, almost humming, but then, not humming and quietly opening the door to the familial sanctity of the staff quarters, where she is embraced by the residual warmth of the fire that has merrily munched through slow, spitting cedar and easy splitting ash and, still with eyes fixed in front of her, she pulls the door, with its warped glass rectangle, shut, feels the key, twists and breathes.
Maybe if she’d broken her inertia and left when this thought process had started she’d have made it, but not now. Now she traces a different route: from the black, splintery latibulum that lies somewhere under the gargoyles, slates and gothic buttresses, through the complex reticulum of beams and wooden pillars that support the great structure of rooftops. She sees through an unnatural locomotion that darkens the skylights as it passes, until it pans round a final corner to reveal, at the end of a last stretch of attic, a doorless doorway, a stark, shadeless bulb and a crimson carpet.
She turns away from the empty doorway, agonising over the sheening sound the musty old sleeping bag, with its dislocated zips and white stuffing, makes, and faces the wall, fighting to control her breathing, hearing the glottal liquid sounds of saliva and muscle filling her head, drawing the all-too-small bedding up to bury the noise, which suddenly frees to reveal her naked legs. She freezes, suddenly silent, and catches the end of a scraping noise from the doorway. Every muscle is straining, every fibre is locked and bound in terrified focus.
The light goes out. Every rational part of her brain that was spinning threads of disbelief to persuade and cajole her into realising that her fear was just a result of an overactive imagination is severed by the dark. The fact that she heard the switch flick makes short work of any renewed hope of power cuts and spent bulbs. She can feel malevolence and anger closing in on her, a cruel, merciless intent; a promise of something more than the mechanical grinding of hungry jaws, a boundless viral agony binding and transmitting its unspeakable horror to the host.
Her legs are still exposed. They cannot be moved. She feels the cold deliberation of them closing in. Her very being is bursting to scream, but a cold constricting weight has filled her lungs.
It is next to the bed. It is slowly reaching for her legs. Her body suddenly pumps like an airless swimmer, far from the surface, but getting closer and closer and…
She’s awake, gasping, sheets damp with perspiration.
Voices and warm laughter drift through from the kitchen next door. She breathes deeply, checking the room briefly, then falls back into her pillows, drawing her exposed legs up under the duvet, and listens to the distant flow of 3am conversation.
Being in the only bedroom on the ground floor can be a trial, with parties sometimes lasting for days, but she’d learned to cultivate an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ attitude, which, though it hadn’t exactly boosted her employability, had certainly expanded her horizons in the eight months she’d lived in the house. Besides, she secretly enjoys the proximity to her housemates, who have become like a family to her.
She thinks about a huddle of penguins in the depths of a dark Antarctic storm and luxuriates in the warmth of her nest.
After a time, she jumps down from her self-built scaffold bed to stand naked in front of the mirror and inspects herself: pulling down each eyelid (minimal red eye), inverting her lower lip to stretch the chin skin taut like a chicken’s (clean), touching her cheeks, breasts, belly (all firm). She stretches, arching her back, yawning, swinging her arms over her head and down in front of her before absent-mindedly scratching her pubic hair. Satisfied with herself, she dresses quickly and enters the kitchen and is immediately assailed by a thick cloud of marijuana smoke.
Nat, Hendo and Pedro are arranged around the kitchen table in various states of activity and inactivity. Hendo has an inverted, wheel-less bicycle next to his chair and is meticulously oiling assorted cogs and components with a soft, yellow rag. Nat is assembling a shark fin in her rusty smoking tin lid; her previous assemblage is hanging from her thin lips. Pedro appears to be concentrating on sagging. Considering the number of empty wine bottles, beer cans and overflowing ashtrays, she is surprised to not be encountering more saggage.
“Oi oi!” shouts Hendo.
“Hola bonita,” drawls Pedro, momentarily smiling through his narrow window of languishment.
“Oh darling, I’m sorry, we didn’t wake you did we?” Nat appears genuinely concerned as she moves a couple of coats from the chair next to her.
“Nah, that’s OK,” says Elsa, “anyone else about?”
“Tanya and Tem have crashed – they’re off sailing early – haven’t seen Billy or Sammy and Ben and Anna are in bed,” says Nat, raising an eyebrow.
“You mean… in bed, in bed?” says Elsa, looking surprised.
“That’s right,” says Nat again, “think that one’s been brewing for a while.”
Elsa hopes no-one will notice the force she is having to put behind her smile. She doesn’t know whether she is more envious of Anna for getting together with Ben or for being in love with someone warm and breathing and able to return her love. A little vacuum waits for her to decide.
“Fancy a wee drop?” Hendo is holding up a quarter-full bottle of Highland Park.
“Mmmm, why not?” she says, her smile becoming a little more relaxed as she appreciates, not for the first time, the way Hendo’s Scottish accent becomes fully liberated by whisky. He pours and hands, she sips, grimaces, then experiences the warm glow as the spirit runs down her throat.
“Are you OK, hun?” Nat puts a skinny arm around her shoulders.
“Yeah, I just had a horrible dream.”
“Dreams are the window to the soul,” states Pedro.
&nb
sp; “I think you’ll find that it’s the eyes which are reputedly the window of the soul, Pedro,” says Nat (Pedro is nodding as if someone has just agreed with him), “but most oneirologists would probably agree that dreams are merely random reflective responses of the brain’s activity of the day, both remembered and experienced.” Nat continues, as she finishes rolling the joint, talking about the transformation of things according to a Chinese philosopher called Zhuangzhi, who dreamt he was a butterfly, then woke up and didn’t know whether the dream was real and he was a butterfly dreaming he was a human, or vice versa. She is glad she feels no such confusion after the dream she just had and once more experiences a deep sense of comfort and belonging amongst her housemates, the like of which she has not felt for the last three years.
Nat is still talking. “Nevertheless, this perspective raises interesting questions about the when, where and what of the soul.”
“Which leads us back to what I was sayin’ before about Cambodia,” says Hendo. “So this wee dude takes us to The Killin’ Fields, right, and yer’ve got a glass-sided monument with all the bones and skulls, right, and they’re all riddled with bullet holes and that, but I thought, right, that I’d feel somethin’ more from it, but it’s jus’ left us cawld, aye.”
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