Street Song

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  I pressed Send before I could change my mind, then logged off. I didn’t want to be tempted to Google Ricky and see what he was up to, or go on Facebook. There was nobody I missed or cared about except Mum. And not enough to go back. I didn’t think of it as home. Home was – well, I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t Ricky’s house.

  * * *

  The low seemed to have affected the girls too. Or maybe it was nerves about the competition which was now a few days away.

  On Sunday in Marysia’s shed – which was even colder than last week – we huddled in coats, and argued about the set list. We had to play two songs.

  ‘“Plastic Girls”, definitely.’ Toni wrote it down. She was wearing a really brightly striped rainbow scarf that clashed gorgeously with her red hair ‘And “Secret Self”?’

  ‘“Secret Self” isn’t your best song,’ I said.

  They both turned on me. ‘“Secret Self” is really important to us,’ Toni said. Marysia smiled, and I had this sense of something going on that I wasn’t part of and wasn’t meant to know about.

  I looked away. ‘The chord sequences are practically the same as for “Plastic Girls”. “You Think You Know Me” shows your range better.’

  They looked at each other, and then at me, as if in disbelief. Even I didn’t know why I was being so insistent. The songs weren’t that different.

  Toni strummed an A, aggressively. ‘No offence, busker boy, but you’re getting a bit up yourself – you’ve no more experience than us.’

  I bent over my guitar, noticing, in the harsh light from the bare light bulb, that it was scratched and had a patch of something sticky just under the bridge. Busker boy. I frowned, licked my finger and rubbed it over the stain. I wondered what they would say if I told them how much experience I did have – that I knew my way round a recording studio, that the TV studio where they’d filmed PopIcon was probably ten times the size of the pub function room where Backlash was happening—

  But it was crap, that experience. Glorified karaoke. RyLee sang to a backing track, the songs Ricky or the production company told him to sing. He had an autotuner to correct any wonky vocals. The dancing, the clothes, the blond highlights – they were more important than the music. I could hardly even remember any of the songs. Busker boy was meant as an insult but I’d learned more about music in two weeks of busking than RyLee had ever known, so I made myself look up and smile at both girls, and say, ‘I know. I don’t know why you let me play with you.’

  ‘Right.’ Toni unwound her scarf. ‘Let’s get started.’

  We decided to play the two contenders with ‘Plastic Girls’ in the middle to see which sounded better with it. Even though we were only in Marysia’s shed, and my fingers cramped with cold for the first few bars, we sounded great. That one live gig had made all the difference. Toni was far more confident, letting her voice soar for the:

  You think you know me but you really don’t.

  You think I’ll love you but I know I won’t.

  and then going really quiet and cracked and heartbreaking on:

  My heart’s too wise to be fooled like that again.

  And Marysia, always proficient and reliable, hit the bass with a verve that lifted her playing into another realm. As for me – well, I stepped up to the mark too, especially for ‘You Think You Know Me’, picking out the guitar solo with the precision of a classical guitarist, showing off. Busker boy indeed. Mind you, I played ‘Secret Self’ really well too, to show how professional I could be, even though I didn’t want us to play it at Backlash.

  When we were done we flumped onto the damp-cushioned garden chairs. Toni pushed her short red hair back behind her ears and blew out through her fringe. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘It does sound better.’ She grinned. ‘I was wrong.’

  ‘Wow. World exclusive: Toni Flynn admits she was wrong. Can I have that in writing?’ I asked.

  She threw her rainbow scarf at me. I wound it round my neck, trying not to let myself breathe in its scent – perfume, wool, and something rosy and sharp that was just Toni, and that I’d have recognised anywhere. Rainbow – wasn’t that a gay thing? Why couldn’t I just ask them?

  ‘What are you wearing on Saturday?’ she asked.

  ‘Um – jeans? T-shirt?’

  ‘That’s a bit ordinary.’

  ‘I’m only the guitarist. Nobody’ll be looking at me,’ I argued. My clothes were starting to get pretty shabby, but what with paying for food and a place to stay, they weren’t a priority. ‘And the more ordinary I look, the better you girls’ll look in comparison.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Toni said. ‘Well, you need to get new strings too. Yours sound really dull.’

  She forgot to ask for her scarf back, so I kept it. It looked like it was all I was going to get from her.

  19

  Frets, the guitar shop, was one of my favourite places in Belfast. Even though I was only ever in there for strings and picks, they never minded you looking at the walls of guitars. Sometimes you’d get into casual conversation with someone trying one out. Mostly guys. For the first time I saw what Toni meant about girls and music. There were days when those were the only conversations I had, apart from passing the time of day with Beany.

  So I didn’t rush after I’d picked up a couple of packets of strings. It was another wet day and business was crap. There was a poster for Backlash behind the counter, and I had an idea of telling the friendly shop assistant with the ponytail that I was going to be playing at it, but I didn’t. Safer to talk about guitars. There was a beautiful Gibson hanging up. I stroked its cool body.

  ‘Gorgeous, isn’t it?’ Ponytail said. ‘That’s redwood and spruce. New in this week.’

  I turned over the price ticket – £3,200 – and sighed.

  ‘Not today then?’ he asked.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow.’ After paying for the strings I had less than a fiver left.

  ‘Oh my God.’ It was a girl’s voice. ‘I thought that was you.’

  My chest tightened. No. Please not a RyLeen. Not after all this time of anonymity and self-respect. I turned round, my hand still on the price ticket, ready to act bemused, but I did half-recognise the thin blonde girl with the huge eyes. Someone from Toni’s school? The Bluebell? No, of course not – it was Shania, the girl I’d met on my first day busking.

  ‘Hey,’ I said, and relief probably made me overenthusiastic. ‘How are you? That’s crazy, seeing you again.’

  ‘I know! It must be fate.’ Her eyes shone in her thin face; you could see spots pebble-dashing her skin under her thick make-up.

  ‘Fate?’

  ‘I came in here to buy Joe – my boyfriend’ – she said the word boyfriend like she wanted the whole shop to hear her – ‘a birthday present. He’s really into his guitar. But I haven’t a clue what to get him. You could help me?’

  ‘Course. How much do you want to spend?’

  ‘Fifteen quid. I’ve been saving.’ She sounded very proud of herself, and I imagined Joe, spotty, bum-fluffy, writing songs for her in his sweaty bedroom. If he was the same age as her he could only be about fifteen.

  ‘Strings? Always useful.’

  She shook her head. ‘It has to be something special.’

  All my suggestions – and let’s face it, there wasn’t much you could buy in Frets for fifteen quid – she dismissed as boring. ‘It needs to be romantic,’ she complained. She frowned at the boxes of picks and the hanging straps. She picked up an engraved leather strap and then let it flop sadly back down when she saw it was £49.99.

  ‘What music is he into?’ I asked. ‘Does he write his own stuff?’ I remembered myself at that age, earnestly penning ‘Jenny’.

  She shook her head. ‘I could get him a music book,’ she said.

  There was a box full of song and chord books – Beatles, Dylan, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran – everything. She pounced on one with a rose and a heart on the cover.

  ‘Favourite Love Songs!’ She clasped it to her chest. ‘Oh my God, that’s perfec
t.’

  She turned it over to look at the price and her pink-lipsticked mouth drooped. ‘Oh.’

  It was £17.99. I thought she was going to cry. When her eyes went all big like that, and her lips wobbled, she looked weirdly like Louise. Maybe that’s why I dug into my jeans pocket and held out three pound coins. ‘Go on,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ She flung herself at me and hugged me with her thin arms.

  Ponytail turned round from tidying the guitars and laughed. ‘Never saw this place as a pick-up joint,’ he said.

  She’s about fourteen, I wanted to say, discomfort pricking all over me. I didn’t hug her back.

  But I did say, ‘My band’s playing at that on Saturday night.’ I indicated the Backlash poster. ‘You and Joe should come along.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Maybe we will.’

  I knew they wouldn’t really. I paid for my strings and went out into the cold drizzle, looking for a place to play.

  20

  The pub for the Belfast heat of Backlash was reassuringly small and shabby. We queued with the other bands to give in our details. Nerves had nibbled me all day – I hadn’t been able to eat a thing. Toni and Marysia, in short patterned dresses that weren’t identical, but sort of similar, were clearly nervous too. But not about the same thing as me. I didn’t worry about fluffing a chord or missing a high note. I wasn’t looking round at everyone else with their instrument cases and wondering if they were better than us. I worried that someone would recognise me. The atmosphere of anticipation, and people running around with lists and phones, of the silent checking out of each other, was so reminiscent of the early stages of PopIcon that I’d lapsed into silence.

  ‘There were loads of tweets this afternoon, from the venue and the organisers,’ Marysia said. ‘I feel like I’m going to make a show of myself in front of the whole of Belfast.’

  ‘You won’t,’ I said. ‘Is Toni OK? That’s the third time she’s gone to the loo.’

  ‘Anto said he’d try to come,’ Marysia said. ‘So she’s extra wound-up.’

  ‘I thought she didn’t like her dad?’

  ‘She doesn’t exactly like him – but she’s desperate for him to take her seriously, musically. She wants his approval, but she’s annoyed with herself for wanting it.’

  I sensed, as I often did, how much these two girls knew about each other.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

  Toni was walking back towards us, a little pale.

  ‘Don’t tell her I told you,’ Marysia whispered.

  ‘Hey,’ Toni said. ‘What’s the hold up here? The queue hasn’t even moved.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said a loud voice ahead of us, and a guy I hadn’t noticed before, with a shaved head and an electric guitar case, leaned over the guys in front of him, to shout at the girl at the desk about their van being on a double-yellow and if they got a parking ticket they’d expect the venue to pay. She kept apologising and saying she’d be with them in a minute, and turning back to the duo with acoustic guitar cases and straggly beards, whose names she couldn’t seem to find on her list. She was pretty and worried-looking, with short blue hair.

  ‘Frigging shambles, this is,’ said electric guitar guy. His gaze swept over Toni and Marysia without interest and then focused on me. ‘They can’t expect people to leave their kit in the frigging street. Them drums cost three thousand. More than the frigging van. They need men out here helping, not a couple of brainless girls.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ I asked.

  ‘He clearly doesn’t mind,’ Toni said. ‘Ass.’

  Luckily, the beardy guys got sorted and shuffled off down the corridor with the blue-haired girl. The electric guitar guy and his mates swaggered up to the desk and shouted more, even though there was nobody there to shout at. I noticed for the first time that they all had the same thing embroidered on their denim jackets: NASTEEZ. Was it a play on nasty or Nazi? Either way, they weren’t the kind of band I’d imagined in Backlash.

  ‘God, I hate those bastards,’ said a voice behind me. I turned to see a tall thin girl with dyed red hair in a long ponytail, carrying a bass guitar case. ‘They’re always like that. Throwing their weight around. They nearly got a recording contract once – or so they say. They think they’re too good for everything.’

  Marysia’s eyes lit up for a moment. ‘You play bass?’ she asked.

  The girl giggled. ‘No! I’m carrying it for my boyfriend. He’s parking the car. He plays bass for The Maloners.’

  I should have recognised her. I should at least have recognised the name of the band, but I didn’t.

  ‘They’re dead good,’ she said. ‘Me and my friends have been following them for ages. And now me and Liam’s together.’ She gave the bass case a stroke. ‘Are you in a band?’

  Toni nodded. ‘Polly’s Tree.’

  She frowned. ‘I don’t think I’ve—’

  ‘We’re pretty new,’ Toni said crisply. ‘This is Marysia and Cal.’

  ‘Oh!’ The girl’s cheeks reddened slightly as she checked me out. ‘Cal from Tipperary!’

  Uh? I thought. That’s when I recognised her. ‘Oh. Um – Olivia?’

  ‘Hi,’ she said.

  A stocky guy in a check shirt came in and pulled her ponytail. ‘Hey, babes,’ he said, and her face lit up. Three other guys piled in after him. ‘Chatting up the opposition, Olivia?’ one of them asked. I wondered what he’d have said if she’d told him she’d done way more than chat me up, but she just laughed.

  When it was our turn the blue-haired girl, Gillian, showed us down the corridor to the room where we’d be waiting – basically a scruffy back bar with a pool table and doors leading to the toilets. A few other bands – mostly boys – were hanging round the bar, or grouped round tables, talking in low voices and tuning up.

  Toni took off her coat and put it over the back of a chair. She fluffed up her hair. ‘So what’s the story with you and that girl?’ she asked.

  ‘Met her in the Bluebell.’

  ‘Met?’

  ‘Maybe more than met.’ It wouldn’t hurt for her to know someone fancied me.

  ‘She has a boyfriend.’ I tried to kid myself Toni sounded jealous, but it was more like disapproval.

  ‘Not that night.’

  Gillian brought us on stage for a soundcheck and to meet Paddy Cann, the local radio DJ who was MCing. I’d never heard of him. ‘You’re number five,’ she said, ‘so you won’t have that long to wait.’

  She explained that, unlike TV talent shows, the judges wouldn’t be sitting at a special table, and there’d be no gimmicks. They’d just be in the audience, sitting at tables like everyone else. Bands were allowed to stay in the audience after they’d played, but not before, she said, because they wanted to bring all the bands on from backstage to make it more of an occasion.

  ‘It’s quite enough of an occasion for me,’ Marysia muttered and Gillian said, ‘Och, you’re adorable,’ as if we were about twelve.

  Waiting to go on, it wasn’t that unlike PopIcon, only scruffier and smaller. Lots of soundchecking. Paddy Cann chatted nonsense to us which I think was meant to make us relax. Then the same endless hanging around backstage eyeing up the opposition. The first band went on, but you couldn’t hear much from where we were – just noise and occasional applause.

  Toni’s phone bleeped. She looked at it and shrugged, but she couldn’t hide the look in her eyes. It was one of the things I was getting to know about her – her eyes were very expressive. And what they expressed now was hurt.

  She passed the phone to Marysia. ‘Says his car’s broken down,’ she said shortly. ‘Typical.’

  ‘Oh, babe,’ Marysia said, and gave her a hug. Someone gave a wolf whistle and I wanted to go and tell them to fuck off, but instead I got us all pints of cider. As I queued at the bar I remembered my first meeting with Toni in the park, how upset she’d been at her dad letting her down. I understood why she wanted his approval even if she didn’t like hi
m much. Part of me, even though I never really wanted to see Ricky again, and even though I knew he’d dismiss Backlash as an amateur thing, wished he was out there to hear us, and be impressed.

  Marysia’s teeth chattered on her glass. ‘Remind me why we’re doing this,’ she said.

  ‘To show all these boys what two girls can do,’ Toni replied.

  ‘Hey,’ I reminded them. ‘Two girls and a guy.’

  21

  ‘And now give a big Backlash welcome to – Polly’s Tree!’

  We ran on and got plugged in. Toni took hold of her mic stand, blinked out into the darkness and turned round to see that we were ready.

  ‘Hi, how’re you all doing?’ she called out to the crowd. She sounded like she’d been doing this all her life. She looked the part too: on stage those little dresses looked really cool. The audience gave a friendly roar in response.

  ‘Brilliant!’ she said. ‘We’re Polly’s Tree and this is “Plastic Girls”.’

  I played the single G chord that introduced the song and then we were away.

  Like the school concert, it went far too fast. Toni’s voice soared and then broke and whispered, flirting with the mic. My fingers flew up and down the neck of my guitar. Then Toni grabbed the mic again, ready for her last chorus:

  Don’t try to make us into plastic girls

  Cos that’s not our world

  No, that’s not our world

  Don’t try to make us into plastic girls

  Cos we’re flesh and bone

  And we know how to hurt

  I think we could all have cried as the last chord died away.