Street Song

by Wilkinson, Sheena;

  Best of all, I’d been to a party and had managed not only not to be tempted by drugs but hardly even to drink. I hadn’t got off with anyone. See, Toni? I said to her in my mind.

  But I was glad Toni couldn’t see me here.

  36

  There were good things about Joe’s. Not having to hang round the streets all day was the best. If I felt like staying in, I could. There was Sky TV and there was usually somebody to hang out with: Joe, Kevin, and a sort of shifting population of Joe’s friends and hangers-on. It could get chaotic – like the time Kevin’s girlfriend, Nicole, came round and screamed in the street at three in the morning. Joe shouted out that he’d get the police if she didn’t go away, but she must have known it was an empty threat – there was no way Joe would be inviting the police in.

  One day I came in early from a crap day’s busking to find Shania watching TV in school uniform.

  ‘Joe’s not in,’ I said.

  She shrugged. ‘So? He doesn’t mind. D’you want to make me some toast?’ She stretched out her thin legs and leaned back, flicking through the channels. Her school blouse was unbuttoned far enough to show a pink lacy bra. She let the hand holding the remote rest between her small breasts, all the time watching me to see if I was watching her. I wondered if Joe liked her in her school uniform. She could be seventeen or so, I supposed. So ask her, I thought. Ask her how old she is.

  ‘Jam?’ I asked, escaping to the kitchen.

  She came round a lot, sometimes with her sister Georgia but often on her own.

  ‘She gets a hard time at home,’ Joe said one night when she turned up late, eyes glassy, crying that she wanted him; she loved him; he was the only one for her. He left her to sleep it off on the sofa and came into the kitchen to carry on with his guitar lesson. ‘Don’t want to disturb her,’ he said, with reason. Joe, for all his enthusiasm, and a decent Yamaha – he’d been given it, or maybe taken it, to pay off a debt – was as musical as a tin of beans. ‘At least when she’s here she’s safe.’

  It depended on your definition of safe.

  Joe seemed to sense my misgivings. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘the wee girl doesn’t get on with her family. I know what that’s like.’

  ‘Me too,’ I said without thinking.

  ‘Yeah, kid, I guessed that. I can always tell when people are adrift. That’s why I said you could stay here.’

  ‘I’m not adrift.’

  ‘OK. Cool.’ He frowned in concentration as he tried to make his stubby fingers contort into an attempt at a C chord.

  ‘Now, listen,’ I said. ‘Do you hear the buzz? That’s because you’re touching the E string. Try to only touch the strings you’re meant to.’

  When we went back into the living room Shania was awake. ‘Joe!’ she said, lifting her head up. ‘You left me.’ She pouted. Her head lolled; she was still pretty out of it. ‘Joe,’ she murmured, ‘you’re so good to me.’

  ‘See?’ Joe said. ‘Lucky she’s got me to take care of her.’ He stroked Shania’s long straggly hair, his big hand nearly as wide as her back, and she preened like a cat and flopped against him.

  I shuddered.

  Not my problem, though.

  37

  Tonight it was Toni making mistakes, not me. She had a cold, her nose a scabby blob in her pale face. The harsh uncovered light bulb in Marysia’s shed made her look all white and red. I wanted to feel sympathetic but it was hard when she was being such a bitch.

  ‘We need to rehearse more,’ I said.

  She banged her guitar down. ‘It’s all right for you. You’ve no idea of the kind of pressure I’m under. What do you have to do all day – hang round busking and living in that doss house?’

  ‘It’s not a doss house,’ I said. ‘And you shouldn’t treat your guitar like that. Or will Mummy buy you a new one if you throw your toys out of the pram?’

  ‘Are you saying I’m spoilt?’ She sniffed, and then sneezed four times.

  ‘You’re acting like it tonight, Princess.’

  ‘I’m not well,’ she said pathetically. ‘And don’t call me Princess.’

  Marysia said, ‘You should have stayed at home, babe. You can’t sing with a cold. And you must be really infectious, sneezing all over the place.’

  ‘Thanks. Spoilt and disgusting.’ She sounded like she was going to cry.

  ‘Look, we should call it a night,’ Marysia said. ‘It’s too cold in here anyway.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Toni said, blowing her nose. ‘We have to sort out this interview film thing.’

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘I texted you about it.’

  ‘My phone’s been out of credit so I haven’t checked it.’

  ‘Well, get some fucking credit!’ she snapped. Then she took a deep breath. ‘How are we supposed to keep in contact? I know you don’t have a lot of cash, but what if something important comes up? If you want to borrow a tenner for phone credit—’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Well, it’s good news. It’s just that it’ll take a bit of organisation.’

  I listened with rising horror as she explained: the Backlash organisers wanted to make a film about Polly’s Tree to put on their website and maybe use in other places. Possibly even on local TV. ‘They aren’t doing all the finalists – but they saw that piece Matt wrote on LiveScene BT and they like our story. Marysia being Polish, me meeting you in the park like that – it is kind of a good story. We just have to sort out when and where they’re going to do it. They want to see us all at home and then in rehearsal. It’ll only be a couple of minutes of film.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No way.’ I bent over my guitar and played the riff from the start of ‘Plastic Girls’ to hide how disturbed I was. ‘You two do it. You’re the ones they’re interested in.’

  ‘We’re a band,’ Marysia said. ‘We should do it together. And it’ll be fun.’

  ‘You don’t have a choice, Cal,’ Toni said.

  ‘I think you’ll find I do.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you don’t. You signed the contract, same as we did.’

  I stopped playing. ‘What contract?’

  She gave a theatrical sigh, went to her guitar case and took out a sheaf of paper. She shoved it under my face. ‘The one you signed?’

  Heart pounding, I made myself look:

  We agree to take part in any publicity organised by Backlash, including but not limited to print interviews, photographs, online video clips and television. And then: Signed – Cal Ryan.

  It went on to declare that we were amateur musicians, had never been signed to a record company, hadn’t performed on TV. And there again was my signature – or rather, a signature.

  ‘So you have to do it,’ Toni said. ‘They’re going to all our houses and then they want footage of you busking and some of us in school. It’ll be really good fun. And don’t pretend you’re shy. You love performing. What are you so scared of?’

  38

  Toni’s voice on the phone was somewhere between disgusted and disappointed. I didn’t have to see her face to know what it would look like.

  ‘Cal! You’re not doing it because you have a cold?’

  ‘I must have got it off you.’

  ‘You don’t even sound hoarse.’

  I couldn’t dispute that. ‘They won’t care; you two are the stars.’

  ‘But will you have recovered for the real thing?’

  Silence. Then, ‘Course I will. It’s not for a week.’

  39

  It wasn’t a complete lie. I had a slightly scratchy throat and stuffy nose. But I probably didn’t get it off Toni – Joe had been lying all over the sofa sneezing and coughing for a couple of days. OK, it wasn’t bad enough to stop me doing anything I really wanted. But it was a good excuse to get out of something I didn’t want to do.

  Not didn’t want to. Couldn’t. Being filmed, being all over the Internet as Cal Ryan, being found out – the thought was enough to make me feel like I really was ill. As for
the rest of what I’d signed – I couldn’t think about it now.

  I lay around the house with Joe most of the day, watching a box set.

  ‘I got this bug off Lola,’ he said, blowing his nose. ‘She got it off her Lacey-Mae. Dirty wee bastards, kids.’ He tossed another used tissue onto the pile on the floor.

  After a bit his snuffling, and the hot air in the room, got to me and I decided fresh air would do me more good than resting in the fug of Joe’s germs. ‘Get us some Lemsip,’ he said thickly. ‘The strongest kind. Oh, and a couple of six packs of Bacardi Breezers.’

  It was nearly December now and the air was sharp. There were no painted kerbstones round here and there were some street names in Irish, just like in Dublin, so I was a lot more relaxed about my southern accent. But when you walked as far as the roundabout, it was all red-white-and-blue kerbstones and loyalist flags. The tribalism was so in your face it was scary. I’d tried to write a song about it, but I’d torn up all my efforts. The last thing Belfast needed was some naïve southerner writing about it. And I didn’t even want to imagine Toni’s reaction.

  I went to the park. Most of it overlooked rows and rows of red-brick terraces, but you could always look up and see the hills beyond the grey estates. Not gentle suburban hills: the streets just bled into wild bare mountain. No wonder Belfast felt so edgy when its actual edges were like this. I sat on a bench and looked down over the city. The lough was pewter-coloured, lots of ships in. I had one of those kicks of homesickness for Dublin Bay, and pushed it away. I concentrated on more immediate problems.

  The Backlash final was in a week. What was I going to do? I couldn’t bear not to be there; it was what all of this – these weeks of trying to make some kind of life here – had been about. Backlash had been the focus. If I lost it, I’d lose myself. I couldn’t just not do it. And Toni and Marysia were relying on me. OK, Ryan Callaghan – RyLee, whatever you called him – had been a fuck-up, but Cal Ryan, despite a few blunders, wasn’t. And it was Cal Ryan who’d signed that contract. What were the chances of being found out? I tried to work it out. If we won, there’d be publicity; the competition was obviously bigger than I’d realised. And then there’d be another fuck-up to add to RyLee’s glittering career – what would it count as? Fraud? I could imagine Ricky’s disdain. Louise’s disappointment. And Toni and Marysia – especially Toni? How would she take being lied to?

  If we just came nowhere, nobody would be interested in us. So – should I go and make sure we didn’t win? By not doing my best?

  But how could I get up on stage and deliberately not play my heart out? I remembered what Toni had said after our first gig – that her dad was a cheater and a liar. That would be cheating, all right. And anyway, I knew the moment I hit that first chord, and looked out into the dark expectation of the audience, and saw Toni’s red hair glinting under the spotlight, I’d be carried away by the music.

  All the thinking and the raw mountainy air were making my head ache. I walked back to Joe’s, stopping at the corner shop and the off-licence for what he’d asked for, and a few bits of food. Now I had a proper kitchen, which wasn’t always that clean but at least had most of the stuff that kitchens are meant to have, I’d learned how to do vegetable soup and a thing with tuna and tomatoes. I tried to make Joe take a few quid from time to time, for bills, but he always shrugged it off, so at least cooking was a contribution. I knew Joe had plenty of money, and I knew why; it was just never mentioned.

  Until now.

  When I got home, Joe was shivering and sweaty, and coughing like an old hag. ‘I’m away to my bed,’ he said, dragging himself off the sofa. He bent over and coughed. He didn’t cover his mouth. ‘Trouble is, it’s Friday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Few wee regulars call. You know.’

  ‘Ah.’ I was never normally here on a Friday evening; we usually rehearsed.

  ‘I’ve the stuff all ready for them.’ He waved towards the cupboard above the TV. ‘All in bags. I call them their lucky bags.’ He smiled at his own wit. ‘Anyway, kid, would you mind just giving them their stuff and taking the money? The big bags are thirty quid; the wee ones are fifteen.’ He spluttered and hacked. ‘Bring them in, don’t do it on the doorstep.’

  I didn’t like it. But I was happy enough to sleep in Joe’s house, drink his beer. It would be pretty hypocritical to say I wouldn’t hand out a few bags of dope or pills or whatever was in the bags. And in a way it would be another good test for me. There was always someone smoking a joint at Joe’s, or getting pissed, and I’d been proud of how I’d been able to hold back; but this – leaving me alone, on a day I was already finding pretty stressful, with bags of drugs – this would be more of a test. In a twisted way, it was good to know he trusted me.

  Who was I kidding? What did he think I was going to do? Run off and sell it for myself? Joe knew I relied on him for the roof over my head. He wasn’t stupid: nobody asked to come and stay in the house of someone they’d met twice if they had many alternatives.

  There were seven bags in the cupboard, all labelled with people’s names. Some I recognised – Aoife came round to the house pretty regularly; Ciaran was Kevin’s brother. Others meant nothing to me. I set the bags out on the coffee table to make life easier and then I thought, don’t be daft, what if the police call at the door? My drug dealing history hadn’t been impressive so far.

  Aoife came first, handed over her thirty quid and said, ‘Quiet tonight. Where’s the big lad?’

  ‘In bed with flu.’

  ‘Aye, it’s going round.’

  A couple of guys my age came next, looked suspicious at Joe not being there, but paid up and left quickly. I started to feel less jittery. I turned the TV on.

  The door rang again. It was two kids. And I mean kids. Maybe not even at secondary school. I looked at them in disbelief. Had they come to ask for their ball back or something?

  ‘Joe’s got something for us,’ said the shorter, fatter one. He had a buzz cut and an earring. He pushed in past me and sat down on the sofa.

  ‘Names?’ I asked.

  ‘Dean and Tyler.’

  I found the bags easily enough. Then hesitated. Dean and Tyler were watching TV, mouths open. Dean was so short his feet hardly reached the floor when he sat back. Tyler was wearing a Simpsons T-shirt. I wanted to say, Look, lads, save your money for sweets. You should be out kicking a ball around, not taking drugs in alleyways. But I didn’t. I took their money, handed over the bags and away they went, not a bother on them, jostling each other.

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ said Tyler.

  I felt sick as I closed the door behind them. And it was nothing to do with my cold. I was relieved when the seventh bag had gone, even though the girl who came for it was about Shania’s age. For the first time I got why Beany had thrown me out so fast. I put Joe’s money into the cupboard. £150. About ten good days’ busking.

  And then, just when I was settling down to watch TV, Shania came with two of her friends. She looked disappointed to see only me. ‘Is Joe not in?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s in bed with the flu.’

  ‘Aww.’ Her thin face drooped. ‘This is Madison and Caitlin,’ she said. ‘I’ve been telling them how cool it is here.’

  She flopped down on the sofa. Her friends stood behind it, looking round the room and at me. They were in track bottoms and tight tops, with big doughnuts of hair high on their heads and painted-on eyebrows. Caitlin was really fat. ‘So where’s the party?’ Madison asked. ‘Shania says there’s always a party here.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ I said.

  Shania pouted. ‘Joe said he’d get us Bacardi Breezers.’

  ‘Shania said we could hang out here,’ Caitlin said.

  ‘Yous can,’ Shania said. ‘Take no notice of him. He’s nobody.’ She glared at me and went out to the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open and a shout of triumph from Shania. Five minutes later all three girls were watching TV and drinking Bacardi Breezers. ‘Tell Joe we’re her
e,’ Shania said. ‘It’ll make him feel better.’

  ‘You go up and make him feel better, Shania.’ Madison stuck her tongue out and waggled it and they all shrieked with laughter.

  My phone rang. I looked at the display: Toni. I frowned at the girls to shut up.

  Toni sounded tired, but no longer grumpy. ‘Cal? I’m sorry if I was a bit harsh. I’ve been – well, I suppose I got a bit stressed out, just trying to juggle everything. School and – anyway. Are you OK?’

  I moved into the kitchen so she wouldn’t hear the girls shrieking.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll be grand in a couple of days.’ I forced out a cough that I didn’t really have, which had the useful effect of hurting my throat and making my next words genuinely hoarse. ‘How did the filming go?’

  She sighed. ‘Stressful! We’re both exhausted.’

  I started to say I was sorry, but she cut me off, suddenly business-like again. ‘Will you be OK to rehearse during the week?’ she asked. ‘It will be our last chance.’

  ‘Yes. Say – Thursday?’

  ‘All right. Take care.’

  I didn’t want to end the call. I didn’t know how I could bear to wait until Thursday to see her. I stood in the kitchen for ages, looking out at the backyard through the grimy window. I heard the front door slam and Kevin’s voice in the living room with the girls. I didn’t want to go in there with them. I really didn’t know what I was doing here. And this time in eight days it would be Backlash and after that, whatever happened, I would have to sort myself out.

  40

  I was stupidly nervous of seeing Toni on Thursday night. And, Sod’s law, I was starting to feel like I actually was coming down with a proper cold now, shivery and stuffy. But it was a good rehearsal, in her dining room. We all fizzed with energy. Maybe the break had done us good.