Street Song

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  I sat on the bed, bent over the guitar, and gave it a quick strum, wincing at how out of tune it was. I plucked at the strings in turn, turning the pegs until it was in tune. The thin B and E strings cut into my fingertips. I hadn’t played for weeks. I heard Louise call something from downstairs and then the door slam. I wasn’t thinking too much about anything, which was restful after all the fighting and fuss with Kelly, but my fingers found chords I hadn’t played for a bit, and the chords grew into a melody. I played it through a couple of times. It was mournful and repetitive, but it made words batter at the side of my brain. I kicked you out today; it was the only way . . .

  OK. I’m not pretending they were good words. But it was the first song I’d made up since ‘Jenny’. Words came to me all the time – sometimes my head was nearly exploding with them all bashing around in there – but I never did anything about getting them onto a page, or matching them up with chords. And I don’t know why I did it that day – I mean, I wasn’t sad about breaking up with Kelly. Maybe it was being alone in the quiet house for once, knowing nobody was listening; maybe it was just better than getting ready to suck up to Father O’Dwyer. My phone buzzed and I ignored it.

  Minutes or hours later I looked up from the cool hard body of my guitar, fingers burning, eyes blinking, and I felt kind of fizzy. I’d made something. I sang the whole thing through.

  We said goodbye today.

  I couldn’t let you stay.

  Because you always wanted things

  Your own destructive way.

  It was nothing like the kind of song Ricky had ever given me to sing. It was rough but it meant something, though I wasn’t sure what.

  I pulled down one of my old school notebooks – Geography – from the shelf over my desk, and turned to the back page. I had to scribble it down before it disappeared. I scrabbled for a pen and all I could find was a red Sharpie which bled through the page. My hands, now used to the shape and feel of the strings, bent themselves reluctantly to writing, but at last the song was down. I wouldn’t tell anyone about it. I didn’t really have friends. Kelly’s friends had been cool but they’d hate me now. People at school seemed to go off me when I got famous – OK, maybe I did become a bit of a dick. And the ones who’d started hanging round when I became infamous – well, they were a pretty good laugh but they melted away when things stopped being funny.

  I set the guitar back on its stand.

  I decided to celebrate my song with a quick nip from the bottle of whiskey Ricky kept in what he called his study, though all he studied there so far as I could tell from his browsing history was pretty pedestrian porn and the stock market. They’d taken to locking the actual drinks cabinet downstairs, but Ricky couldn’t seem to give up his upstairs stash, and I couldn’t seem to give up helping myself. Not every day, just when I had to. I could have bought drink but finding Ricky’s pathetic, unimaginative hiding places was much more fun. Today was so easy that I almost felt sorry for him: behind the curtain. I saw the slight bulge the second I pushed open the door. It was unworthy of him.

  From there everything went a bit hazy. Too much of the whiskey maybe. I shouldn’t have taken it back to my bedroom.

  Ricky came back. Straight to my room. Didn’t even knock. I was enjoying his whiskey and my song. He started shouting about Father O’Dwyer and disrespect and spoilt little bastards and wastes of space.

  ‘You were nothing when I found you! Just another little wannabe.’ Spit bloomed in the corners of his lips. ‘And look at you now – you’re still nothing. You’ll ALWAYS be nothing!’ I bent over my guitar to protect it.

  I’m not saying he hit me that hard. I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it. His punch made me reel. My punch made him fall. His head struck the bedpost. Blood. I remember the blood.

  Even with everything that’s happened since, I’ll never forget the blood.

  2

  I was playing my guitar in this park on the north side when I met Toni. She was crying. I didn’t know then how rare that was for Toni. And I didn’t know it was the most important meeting of my life. Girls were the last thing on my mind.

  It was dusk, the sky purply-grey like a bruise. My fingertips were zinging so I must have been playing for a while.

  I’d dashed out of the house on a wave of panic, ramming my guitar into its case and slamming down the catches, throwing clothes, phone, wallet into a backpack while Ricky’s body sprawled across my unmade bed, blood from his head seeping into the white sheet.

  I must have still been drunk, running down the road – as well as you can run with a guitar case and a backpack. The sea sparkled in the corner of my right eye. I dashed up the main street, past cupcake cafés and gastro pubs, and across to the station, and there was a DART due in two minutes. I hesitated on the platform. I should go back. Anyone decent would go back. Then the little green train came round the corner, slowed, stopped, and I stepped forward and pressed the button to open the door.

  The whole way into town the sun glittered too hard on the sea, and the rhythm of the train beat in my brain: You’ve killed him, you’ve killed him, you’ve killed him. At every stop I thought about getting off the train, crossing the platform and going back. But I didn’t. Half an hour later I was walking across O’Connell Bridge, and nobody had paid me any attention at all.

  I decided to empty out my bank account, so I’d have cash to take me wherever I decided to go, and I couldn’t be traced so easily. I wasn’t sure how much money I had – I hadn’t earned as much as you might think from the RyLee days, and most of it had gone on the Audi. I checked my balance at an ATM. €1329, it said. Available balance today €500.

  Shit. Thirteen hundred euro would have been grand if I’d been going to Father O’Dwyer’s penitentiary and sitting in with my mammy every night revising for my exams, but it wasn’t going to get me far in the big bad world.

  How far did I want to go?

  My fingers twitched as I waited for the cashpoint to release the five hundred euro. If Ricky was dead – no, he couldn’t be dead, he wasn’t dead, he’d looked dead, oh God, he had looked dead and I’d gone out and left him lying there, I hadn’t even called 999—

  ‘Son, your money.’

  OK, I’d hit him in self-defence but just leaving him there—

  ‘Here – d’you want your money or not?’

  ‘Sorry, yeah.’ I grabbed the wad of notes – ten fifties, it didn’t look much – while the machine beeped. The man behind me in the queue – big, bald, and flicking his card impatiently with his thumb – shook his head.

  ‘You’re lucky I’m honest, son. I could have been away with that.’

  Louise would be home by now. Had she found him?

  The whiskey burnt its way back up my throat. I swallowed hard.

  ‘You OK, son?’

  I stuffed the notes in my wallet and dashed across the road, breathing hard through my mouth to stop myself being sick.

  I was going to have to get a grip.

  I bought some water, crossed the road and turned right along the quay, pushing past tourists with my guitar case.

  I could go somewhere. Far away. Where nobody had heard of Ryan Lee or Ricky Nolan – that should be easy enough – and start a new life. Just me and my guitar. I could live in Brooklyn with hipsters. I could play my guitar in a bar at night and work in a diner by day. I could grow a beard.

  But I hadn’t enough money to get to New York. Brighton then. Brighton was meant to be really cool.

  I looked in a travel agent’s window. Lots of cheap last-minute deals to Ibiza and Magaluf. But I knew what would happen if I went somewhere like that. I’d fall in with a crowd of wasters, drink too much, take drugs, pass out on the beach, probably get arrested.

  And I hadn’t brought my passport.

  So: I could stay home and get arrested instead.

  Murder? Manslaughter? Even if he was OK, leaving him like that – not trying to help; that had to be a crime. Nothing he’d ever done to me had been
in that league.

  I had to do the deep breathing again and lean against a wall.

  Something buzzed in my back pocket. My phone. I pulled it out. Mum calling.

  I lurched across the road, cars beeping and swerving round me, and hurled the phone into the Liffey. Then I kept on walking along the north side of the river, until I didn’t know where I was.

  Which is how I found myself in that park. I must have walked for hours because my feet hurt, and my shoulders ached from the unfamiliar weight of the guitar case. I felt hollowed-out inside but not exactly hungry. And I didn’t dare go into a shop, imagining the newspaper headlines: Ricky Nolan Murdered; Stepson Flees. Nolan Murder – RyLee Suspect.

  No. It was too soon for that. But it could be on the Internet already or the radio. People might be talking about it. Did you hear about that Ricky Nolan? He had it coming to him; he was an arrogant shite. Ah, but nobody deserves to die like that. And that RyLee – sure they all come to bad ends, those teen stars. Though you’d hardly call him a star …

  Thank God I’d got rid of my phone. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop myself checking to see what was going on.

  I didn’t even know what the park was called. I didn’t know the north side at all. A black dog bounced over with a yellow ball in its mouth, and jumped up, its paws muddying my jeans. ‘Sorry,’ said its owner, puffing along behind. ‘He’s only young.’

  I sat down on a bench. I was knackered. I made sure my wallet was safely squashed down to the bottom of my backpack – it looked a dodgy kind of park – and took my guitar out of its case and set the case beside me to deter anyone else from sitting down. Just holding it felt good. Its solid bulk between me and the world. I leant on it. I tried the strings. It was still in tune. I thought I’d try and remember the song I’d been making up earlier, but as soon as I started the words juddered to a halt in my throat. Because suddenly it wasn’t about Kelly; it was about Ricky.

  I couldn’t let you stay.

  Because you always wanted things

  Your own destructive way.

  Ricky always got his own way. But I’d been the destructive one.

  My fingers kept on picking. It was a more complicated melody than I usually wrote; it took all my concentration and all the bad thoughts about Ricky just bled out to the edges. My arms goosepimpled a bit but I didn’t mind.

  The chink of metal on plastic made me jump.

  I looked up. A red-haired girl was zipping up a small fabric purse. She gave me a wobbly grin, and I saw that her eyes were smudged with tear-stained mascara. They were great eyes, greeny-brown and shiny – I suppose that was the tears. She had a backpack over her shoulder and a guitar case sitting beside her on the path. I looked at my own guitar case. A single euro coin gleamed.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t—’

  ‘Bit of a daft place to busk. I mean there’s nobody around, is there?’ She had a northern accent, and you could hear the tears in her voice.

  ‘Yeah. I was more just – trying out something new.’

  She sighed. ‘I wish I could play like that.’

  I gestured at her guitar case. ‘So – what sort of stuff do you play?’ I didn’t really care but despite the tear stains she was pretty in a fierce kind of way. A diamond stud glittered in her nose, and she had a chunky, confident way of standing in her blue DMs and green leggings that made her feel very present somehow. The purpling sky lit her bright hair like the edges of a flame. She was wearing a short, swirly dress, and I suddenly felt uncool in a way I wasn’t used to.

  She wrinkled her forehead. ‘Kind of indie. Ish. Acoustic. I’m in a band – me and my friend. We’re called Polly’s Tree.’ Her northern accent made her sound a little American – like I was in Brooklyn already. It was cute. I wondered if she was a student at Trinity or somewhere. If I hadn’t messed up my last couple of years at school that’s what I could have been doing now. Meeting girls like this.

  ‘D’you live round here?’

  She shook her head, her short red hair bouncing around her cheeks. ‘I came to stay with my dad in Marino. He was meant to be helping me sort out some better chord sequences for my new songs, but he’s disappeared.’ Her mouth wobbled, and she frowned hard, as if she hated to show any kind of weakness.

  ‘Disappeared?’

  ‘He’s gone to play at some festival in Donegal. He forgot I was coming. He’s a bit – unreliable.’ She shrugged. ‘His girlfriend wanted me to stay anyway but – nah. I’m just heading home.’ She picked up her guitar case.

  ‘Stay and play?’ I suggested, my fingers automatically starting to pick out another melody. ‘We could have a bit of a jam. You look like – well, like you need a bit of cheering up?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Should be used to him by now.’ She narrowed her eyes and squinted down the path. In the dusk the trees had darkened into black looming shadows. ‘And I don’t want to be walking through here when it’s getting dark.’

  ‘Ah, sure, stay for a bit, and then I’ll walk you home.’ Girls loved all that protective stuff. And I didn’t want to be on my own again.

  ‘Well …’

  ‘You know you want to.’ I did my classic irresistible RyLee pose – head cocked like a puppy, eyes as wide as I could make them. It was a bit dangerous – she was about my age; she could well have recognised me.

  She clearly didn’t. I’d never done anything in the north, and I suppose she was just a bit too old and, let’s be honest, far too cool to have been a RyLeen.

  ‘I’ve missed the last train home,’ she said. She chewed her lip. ‘There’s a bus at ten. I don’t want to be too late.’

  ‘It’s Friday night.’

  She took out her phone and checked the time. ‘I’ll stay for twenty minutes,’ she said, in the kind of tone that told me it wouldn’t be twenty-one. ‘And you have to promise to walk me the whole way to the bus.’

  ‘Course I will.’

  ‘OK.’ She sat down beside me, shoving my guitar case out of her way. She took out her guitar, and I nearly gasped. It was a beautiful old Martin – from the seventies, I’d guess.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That’s—’

  ‘I know it’s old and scruffy,’ she said. ‘My dad gave it to me for Christmas. He restores them for people – I think this one just didn’t get picked up and it meant he didn’t have to pay for a present.’

  ‘That’s a seriously lovely guitar.’ My fingers itched to play it, but the girl was already bent over it, and looking at me expectantly.

  ‘Can you show me that chord you were doing? After the G? It sounded really nice.’

  I played the bit I thought she meant. ‘So watch my fingers,’ I said. ‘They go from there – to there.’

  She bent over her guitar, frowning in concentration. She tried to copy me but she kept just missing it. ‘You need to try to stretch your fingers more,’ I said. ‘It’s easier for me because my hands are bigger.’ I leant towards her and took hold of her right hand. She stiffened. ‘Sorry.’ I pulled my hand away. ‘I was only going to show you—’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ She flexed her hand. It was smallish and square, her nails painted turquoise. ‘OK, so show me.’

  I placed my hand over hers and manoeuvred her fingers into the right position. ‘Ow,’ she said. ‘That wrecks.’

  ‘You just need to keep practising,’ I said. ‘I used to not be able to do it.’

  ‘I need to get better by the end of September,’ she said, looking at her fingers on the strings the whole time she was talking.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘We’ve entered this competition. Backlash. Have you heard of it?’

  ‘No.’ I guided one of her fingers that kept threatening to jump off the fretboard. ‘There – keep doing it like that.’

  ‘I’m a really good singer,’ she said.

  ‘Modest.’

  ‘I don’t believe in false modesty.’ She didn’t stop playing. ‘I’m a good singer and we write awesome songs. But I know I’m a crap
guitarist. I never really bothered until we started Polly’s Tree.’

  ‘You just need practice.’ There was no way she played well enough for a competition unless it was some kind of amateurish fun thing, but I wasn’t going to say that. And she didn’t strike me as the kind of girl who did things for fun. But I liked helping her. The panic inside me calmed. I’d never tried to teach anyone anything before, but I seemed to be OK at it.

  ‘I promised Marysia I’d nail the guitar this weekend. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come all this way. I’m going to kill Dad.’

  I tried not to wince. ‘You have a month.’

  ‘He and Bernie – his girlfriend – are going to Spain for two weeks,’ she said. ‘It was now or never.’

  ‘I could maybe help you,’ I suggested. ‘I’ve nothing on this weekend. I don’t mind coming round to your house.’ And it’s getting dark, and if I hook up with you I won’t have to spend one of my precious fifty euro notes on a bed for the night. I could hide out at your house and keep my head down until I can sneak home and get my passport. Maybe when Mum’s out at Ricky’s funeral.

  My fingers skittered on the strings.

  ‘You’re not a bad teacher,’ she said. ‘For someone I just met in a random park.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I wondered how hard you’d have to work for actual praise from this girl.

  ‘But you can’t just come round to my house,’ she said. ‘It’s too far.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ She must live in some crazy miles-away suburb outside the M50 – Blanchardstown or Ballymun or somewhere. Pity; I’d imagined a nice messy student bedsit in town.

  ‘Look.’ She chewed her lip as if she was nervous. ‘I have an empty house. My mum’s in London on some work course. If you really mean it about coming to help, there’s a spare room you can crash in.’ Then she looked horrified and said, ‘I mean – oh my God, no. That’s a crazy idea. I don’t know a thing about you. Sorry. Forget it.’

  ‘It’s not a crazy idea,’ I said. It was. I could have been any kind of a pervert or weirdo or thief. But I wanted to go with her so much. Partly because she didn’t know a thing about me.