Street Song

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  ‘Of course I won’t.’ I was about to remind her that it was her ma that had thrown me out, but I knew what she meant so I held my tongue.

  ‘A flat’d be cheaper than a hostel, wouldn’t it?’ Marysia asked.

  ‘I suppose. But then you need to have people to share with, and references, and sign contracts and – ah, you know, all that shit.’

  ‘We have a gig on Friday night,’ Toni interrupted.

  ‘Hopefully,’ Marysia corrected. ‘We have to audition on Monday. It’s for the school charity concert, in aid of Malawi.’

  ‘We have to audition to be in the school charity concert?’

  ‘It might only be a school concert, but we need the practice.’

  ‘OK. So I get to see all your friends? Cool. Are they all as hot as you two?’ I waited to see them blush and look shy and pleased at being called hot. They didn’t. Which made me burble on stupidly, ‘Actually – they’re not, are they? I saw some girls from your school in town – recognised the uniform – and they were mingers.’

  ‘Hey! You’re going to have to work on your attitude to women if you’re going to be in this band,’ Toni said. ‘You’re not using words like minger. And we don’t care whether or not you think we’re hot.’ She said ‘hot’ like it was something ridiculous.

  ‘God, I love bossy girls,’ I said with a grin. ‘Boss me some more.’

  She looked me up and down. Not in a good way. I looked me up and down too, and saw what she meant. I was a lot scruffier than the boy she’d picked up in Dublin. My clothes were clean but rumpled.

  ‘Cal,’ she said. ‘Our image – I mean Polly’s Tree’s image – is quite – you know – well, clean cut.’

  ‘Is it?’ Marysia said. ‘I didn’t think we had an image.’

  ‘Of course we have an image. Look, Cal, don’t take offence but would you mind shaving?’

  ‘Shaving?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s just – that hairy hipster look? It’s not really us.’

  I stroked my chin. ‘I haven’t been growing a beard on purpose. I just left home in a hurry and a razor was one of the things I didn’t pack.’

  ‘That was totally my fault,’ Toni said quickly.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Spiriting you away from the park?’

  ‘Oh, right. I don’t mind shaving. I’ve sort of got used to the beard but it’s not a fashion statement.’

  ‘Not like your phone, then?’

  I threw my capo at her and she caught it and laughed, and I had this sudden rush of joy.

  ‘I’m going to get us a drink,’ Marysia said. ‘Won’t be long. Don’t come up to the house – they’ll all get far too excited at seeing an actual boy. And I bet you’re a Catholic, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘God, you northerners are obsessed with religion. Even the Polish ones.’

  Marysia laughed.

  ‘Why Polly’s Tree?’ I asked, when she’d gone and Toni and I were just messing about with the guitars. She’d obviously been practising since I’d left. Maybe now we’d be able to practise together. If only I could get round her mum.

  ‘It’s the name of a Sylvia Plath poem.’

  I grinned. ‘Course it is.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘At least it isn’t one of those girl band names with pussy or doll or kitten or something in it.’ I wondered if she had heard of Sweet Treat, but I didn’t ask.

  ‘Ew. Hardly. And I suppose now it’s not a girl band at all.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Well – no. It’s just that we kind of started the band after this songwriting workshop we did in the summer and it was nearly all boys. And that annoyed us. So we just saw it as a girl thing, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t mind being in the background. You can think of me as your session guitarist.’

  She looked at me closely. ‘Is that really enough for you?’

  ‘Totally.’

  Marysia came back with a bottle of Coke and a packet of Polish biscuits, and we sat round and had a sort of picnic, chatting about what to play at the audition. The electric light in the shed was harsh, and we all had our coats on, but even so, it felt cosy. I was in no rush to get back to the Crossroads.

  When a knock came to the door we all jumped, and Marysia swore in Polish. The door opened and a fattish girl, younger than us, came in. She ignored Toni, gawped at me, and said to Marysia in a whiney voice, ‘Have you taken my hockey skirt?’

  ‘Piss off, Krystyna. Toni and I could both fit into your hockey skirt. Why would I have it?’

  Krystyna’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Yeah, you’d probably like that, you big lez!’ she cried.

  I waited for Marysia to hit back with another insult, but she didn’t. She blushed and bit her lip. Toni flung her arm round Marysia and gave Krystyna a hard stare. Then she stuck her tongue out at her, waggled it suggestively and said, ‘Oh, you’d better watch out, Kryssie, in case I just can’t resist—’

  ‘I’m telling Mama!’ Krystyna yelled, and blundered back out of the shed.

  Marysia shook Toni’s arm off. ‘You shouldn’t tease her,’ she said. She still looked flustered. ‘You only make her worse.’

  ‘She asks for it,’ Toni said.

  ‘My lovely little sister,’ Marysia explained to me. ‘She just wanted to come and nosy because she knew there was a boy here. She’s an idiot. Gets all her ideas from reality TV.’

  But is she right? I wanted to ask. Are you and Toni more than friends? Is Polly’s Tree a girl thing in more ways than I know? And if so, why not just say? It’s not like it’s a big deal these days. But I didn’t ask.

  15

  Beany put down the Daily Mirror and whistled. ‘Didn’t recognise you there, big man.’

  I fingered my smooth jaw. ‘Fed up with the shaggy look.’ I wasn’t going to admit I’d done it to please a girl. Especially not a girl who was so resistant to my charms.

  ‘Away busking again?’

  I shook my head. ‘My band has an audition.’ I didn’t say it was for an insignificant school concert. It felt good to have an appointment – somewhere to be, someone waiting for me.

  ‘So you’re sticking around a while?’

  I nodded. ‘Is that OK? I mean – the room?’

  Beany pursed his lips. ‘I’m not meant to let people stay long term. It’s registered as a tourist hostel, not a dosshouse.’

  ‘Ah, Mervyn.’ I gave him a RyLee smile. His name was Mervyn, and I always remembered to use it, but I still thought of him as Beany.

  He looked at the computer screen. ‘But we’re not too busy.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘And you’re no bother. At least you don’t come home shouting and boking. You should have seen that bathroom this morning after them rugby players.’ He shook his head. ‘Dirty hallions. Aye, you can stay.’

  ‘Any discount?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Get away! You’ll not get a bed this cheap outside Maghaberry.’ I had no idea what he was talking about, which must have shown on my face because he said, ‘That’s the jail, son. So I’ll put you down for – what? Till the end of October?’

  I nodded. The end of October was ages away. I had just about enough to pay for the room until Backlash. After that – well, I’d worry about it when the time came.

  I was getting used to walking everywhere, so I didn’t mind the hour it took to get to Toni and Marysia’s school, following the map Toni had drawn for me since my phone wasn’t up to that kind of thing. Whatever else happened as a result of my Belfast adventures, I was going to end up fitter. Especially since I’d pretty much stopped going to the pub. I’d made eleven quid yesterday and I still had most of it because we’d rehearsed again in the evening and Toni had cooked a big curry for us for afterwards. Her mum was out. She hadn’t actually said that was why it was OK for me to come over, but I sort of knew. It would take more than RyLee’s charm and puppy dog eyes to get round that one.

  It was weird being in a school. I hadn�
�t been in one since Ricky pulled me out of school and into rehab in the middle of last year. I was about to be thrown out anyway. Toni’s school smelt of polish. I had to wait in Reception under a line of portraits of headmistresses, each one more disapproving than the last, with a hatchet-faced biddy watching me from behind her glass partition. I began to see why Toni’d vetoed the beard. Then a bell rang, making me jump, and suddenly there were girls in maroon blazers spilling out of doors all along the corridor. Every single one of them stared when they saw me and my guitar case. I recognised Krystyna, stomping along behind a group, who all giggled and gawked. But they weren’t RyLeens. It was finally sinking in that Northern Ireland was one of the many places in the world where RyLee’s brief and modest success hadn’t penetrated.

  ‘Hey.’ Toni was standing in front of me. I’d forgotten how much her maroon blazer didn’t go with her red hair, and she looked different in some way I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘You found it. Don’t look so scared! The audition’s in the drama studio. Marysia’s meeting us there.’

  Lots more girls stared on the way to the drama studio. I did spy a couple of hotties, but when I was with Toni they seemed a bit boring. Though I decided, turning round to look after an Asian girl with a long dark plait and even longer legs, that I could quite go for the short skirt, black tights look.

  Toni hit me with the back of her hand. ‘Behave,’ she said. ‘She’s way out of your league. And you’re here to help us get the gig, not drool over girls.’

  Suddenly I realised what was different about her.

  ‘Where’s your diamond stud?’ I asked.

  Embarrassment flickered across her face. ‘Oh. Not allowed it in school.’

  I grinned. ‘Must be awful to have to live by all those petty rules.’

  ‘Come on, Troubadour.’

  The drama studio was small and dark, and surrounded by the lunchtime roar that was exactly like my old school, only less raucous because it was all girls. Two girls with clipboards and a woman who looked like she’d rather be eating a sandwich in the stafroom were sitting on chairs like TV judges. A few random girls hung round. It all felt eerily familiar, and it was stupid that I was suddenly more nervous than I had been at any of the PopIcon auditions. The room was filled with the screeching of strings being tuned. Marysia, with her bass slung round her neck, stood slightly apart from four girls who were obviously the string quartet.

  The woman clapped her hands and raised her voice. ‘Girls!’ She didn’t seem to notice that I wasn’t a girl, or maybe she’d just been clapping her hands and shouting ‘Girls!’ for so many decades that she couldn’t stop now. ‘We’ll have Serendipitous Strings first, and then Polly’s – er – Tree.’

  Marysia came and stood with me and Toni, grimacing. ‘Don’t be nervous,’ Toni whispered. ‘We’re not being beaten by a group called Serendipitous Strings.’

  Serendipitous Strings were probably brilliant if you wanted music to accompany a coffin being lowered into the ground, but even the old woman, whose face had collapsed lower and lower into her chins as the four bows scraped slower and slower, couldn’t hide her smile when Toni struck a bright G chord, grinned out at the audience and said in a confident voice that sounded like she’d been performing all her life, ‘We’re Polly’s Tree and this is “Plastic Girls”.’ She turned back to me and Marysia, nodded, and the song burst into life. It was better than we’d ever rehearsed it. Even an audience of ten made a difference to our spark. Being on a stage with Toni and Marysia was a million times better than singing in the street.

  We got the gig no bother. ‘Headlining,’ Toni said smugly when we were packing up the instruments. ‘I insisted.’

  Marysia raised her eyebrows at me and sighed. ‘She gets like this,’ she said. ‘She’ll be unbearable if we ever have groupies.’

  ‘So how many people will be at the concert?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s always well attended,’ Marysia said. ‘Two hundred. Maybe even two fifty.’

  ‘Is that OK, Cal?’ Toni asked. ‘You won’t get stage fright, will you?’

  The last gig RyLee had played had been to two thousand, and it had been televised. OK, on an obscure cable channel that clearly nobody in this country watched, but still.

  ‘I think I’ll be OK,’ I said, grabbing my guitar case. ‘So, you little schoolgirls have to go back to class now, don’t you?’

  * * *

  It was sunny for the first time in days, and instead of going back into the city centre I busked on the main road near the school. It was very like where I lived in Dublin only without the sea – cafés and smart shops and lots of yummy mummies hauling buggies out of shiny Range Rovers – and people looked surprised to see a busker.

  ‘Are you collecting for charity, dear?’ asked an old lady in a blue coat, fumbling with the clasp of her handbag. ‘Which one?’

  ‘Distressed musicians.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, and walked on.

  But other people were more generous, and I ended the afternoon with nearly twenty quid. I stopped at Lidl on the way back and stocked up on cheap food. There was officially a kitchen at the Crossroads. It wasn’t up to much but you could manage pasta, toast, that kind of thing. Cheaper than going to Burger King every night like I’d done last week. And healthier – I’d been mortified to find a rash of spots lurking under my beard. RyLee had never had spots and Cal Ryan wasn’t going to get them either, not with his first real gig on Friday night. I bought some apples to make sure.

  ‘You look cheerful,’ Beany said, when I bounced up the steps as he was bending to unlock the bottom bolt of the front door. He stood up gingerly, pressing his fists into the small of his back, his belly straining against his tracksuit top.

  ‘Is your back bad?’

  ‘Ach, I’m tortured.’

  ‘You need somebody to do the heavy work,’ I said. ‘A man of your age should be taking it easy.’

  ‘Here, less of the cheek.’ He shuffled back to his desk and picked up his paper. Then put it down again. ‘Would you want a few hours’ work?’ he asked. ‘Cleaning, like.’

  That wasn’t what I’d meant. I was only being nice. I couldn’t think of anything worse than cleaning the Crossroads, especially after a stag party or a crowd of football supporters. But I was worried about money – not every day would be as good as today, and it didn’t look like Polly’s Tree was actually going to earn anything. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Fiver an hour. Cash in hand.’

  ‘That’s way below the minimum wage.’ I thought about the day I’d gone out and bought my Audi.

  Beany looked sly. ‘Son – you’ve no ID. I don’t know what you’re doing here and you’re no bother to me, so I don’t care. But it’s a fiver an hour, cash in hand, no questions asked. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘Good man. There’s a big match on Thursday night. The place’ll be heaving.’

  16

  I was heaving myself on Friday morning when I faced the upstairs toilets and the two eight-bed dorms with my mop and bucket. I tied a bandana round my mouth and nose and tried not to breathe in at all. It made busking, even in the rain – it was pouring today – seem like easy money. But when Beany came out to the yard where I was sluicing out the bucket and handed me a tenner, it felt worth it, even though I’d soon be handing it back to him.

  ‘Fair play to you,’ he said, grimacing into the drain. ‘There’s tea made in the kitchen. Come on in out of that.’ He looked up at the overflowing gutters splashing into the yard.

  I shook the rain from my hair and followed him into the kitchen where two steaming mugs of tea sat on the scratched Formica table. Beany handed me a Penguin. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Bonus.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I sat down at the table and unwrapped it. I hadn’t had a Penguin for years, and the chocolate was still as thick and delicious as I remembered. Beany sat down opposite me like we were old pals and took a long draw on his own tea.

  ‘You did a good job
, son,’ he said. ‘It’s not always that bad. But them dirty beasts is banned now.’

  I blew on my tea. And because he was being so friendly, I said, ‘B— Mervyn, you’re always banning people. But you don’t really get much repeat business, do you? And most people only stay one night anyway. So what’s the point?’

  Beany didn’t answer for a while. He twisted his Penguin paper and tied it into a knot. Then he said, ‘Look, son, I’ve been in this city all my life. And I don’t mind telling you I’ve been in the odd wee bit of trouble. I was in and out of jail for most of my twenties. Too fond of the drink. Too fond of a fight.’ He sniffed. ‘But in there – it wasn’t the drink. The drink’s nothing. It’s them drugs.’

  I looked into my cup.

  ‘See in the old days? There was no drugs in this city – well, there was, but the paramilitaries had it under control. See now? Free for all. I’ve seen what they do to people. I’ve been running this hostel for seven years and I’ve never had no bother. ‘Cause I have a Zero. Tolerance. Approach.’ He unwrapped another Penguin. ‘It’s the only way, son. I know this isn’t the fucking Europa Hotel, and I don’t mind a bit of noise and a bit of craic and the odd bit of a mess. But the one thing I won’t have is drugs. So I show people I mean business if they overdo it with the drink. And the word gets out: no point trying it on at the Crossroads.’

  He drained his cup and pushed back from the table. ‘I’ll give you a few hours when I can. The oul’ back’s not getting any better. And since you’re an employee now, you don’t have to stay out all day. Special perk. Seeing what the weather’s like.’

  My room at the Crossroads wasn’t luxurious but it was dry and private and fairly warm, though the eccentric radiator never kicked into life until halfway through the evening, and with nobody else around until five, I could go into the lounge and see if there was anything on TV. After days busking in the street, this felt like a big treat.

  I wondered how my life got so small and simple, and why it somehow felt better than it ever had. But before I settled down to daytime TV, I pulled out the wrapped-up lump of weed from the bottom of my backpack. I wasn’t about to get rid of it – I mean, you never knew – but I thought I’d find it a better hiding place. Maybe keep it on me in future. Just to be safe.