Talking to Addison

by Jenny Colgan

  ‘Shut up!’ I pinched him hard, before we all got taken into a dark alley and duffed up. ‘It’s an exchange scheme. Edinburgh’s full of pissed Cockneys asking people for ten pee for an eel pie.’

  Chali had been nominally working today, but had spent the entire day in a fit of excitement, asking me whether I preferred the bolt or the hoop skewered through her eyebrow. She’d even tried to rope Mrs Bigelow into coming, who’d said she hadn’t missed Coronation Street since Charles and Diana’s wedding, and wasn’t Chali a bit worried that people might mistake her for a professional, dressed like that?

  At the door we were charged a revolting ten pounds to get in. Josh and Kate just handed it over as if it were nothing – which it was to them – so I tried not to grumble too much, but I did just have to try…

  ‘Am I on the guest list?’

  The bouncer, who was built like a brick factory for making shithouses, laughed in a way designed to show me how unfunny that was – like the Master does just after he’s captured Dr Who and been offered a jelly baby.

  ‘Are you from a record company, darlin’?’

  ‘Yes!’ I said immediately. Confidence is all. Josh stifled a giggle behind me.

  ‘Which company is that then?’

  ‘Ehm … Cross Scot’s Records?’

  He bent down and looked me straight in the eye. His one enormous eyebrow cast a shadow underneath his eyes. I tried to stare him out.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure. Haven’t you heard our latest number one –’ I cast around for inspiration – “Piss in the Gutter”?’

  He clasped an enormous paw on to my shoulder.

  ‘No. Did you hear my last record, “Blood in the Gutter”?’

  ‘No,’ I gulped.

  ‘No, sir,’ I heard from Josh behind me.

  ‘Well then, fuck off.’

  I stared hard at the ground.

  ‘Can I pay the ten pounds?’

  ‘You can pay fifteen for cheek.’

  ‘I’ll get it,’ said Josh rushing in. I squeezed his arm gratefully as he handed over twenty and waved away the change.

  ‘Thank you for saving me, oh wimpy one,’ I said, once we were safely inside.

  ‘I only did it because I thought he was going to eat you.’

  ‘So did I. This is going to be a great evening, I can tell.’

  Inside it was boiling hot and absolutely heaving with people in weird trendy gear who looked much younger and immeasurably more self-confident than I did. I sighed. I was clearly missing the gene that made me want to hang about in places where the walls were wet with condensation. Right now I would kill to sit down.

  Josh was fighting his way through the crowds to get to the bar, and the teenagers behind him were pointing and giggling at him as he went. After about six hours he returned with three slopping pints of watery lager in plastic glasses, and an extremely pained expression on his face.

  ‘Well, it’s not Harry’s Bar,’ was the only thing he said, sipping his pint with as much dignity as he could muster as we stood out like three banjos at a funeral.

  ‘God, here’s to not being students any more,’ said Kate. ‘They have to come here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ said Josh. ‘That round cost me eight sixty.’

  ‘Yes, but they put on added tie tax for you,’ I said.

  ‘This had better be the Beatles at the Cavern Club,’ said Kate morosely.

  ‘More like The Roaring Boys at Guildford Town Hall,’ said Josh.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Exactly. 1986. They were shit. And I tell you, it wasn’t three pounds a pint, either.’

  I looked around faintly anxiously for Finn. I wasn’t going to get panicky quite yet, but I smoothed down my shirt and was vaguely conscious that my hands were sweaty.

  ‘I’m going to give it five minutes, then I’m going home,’ said Kate.

  ‘You can’t! You can’t leave me! You paid ten pounds!’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Josh.

  ‘But you paid thirty!’

  In front of us, a bald bloke with enormous Doc Martens and braces slipped up on a pool of beer and what might have been sick, and fell on his arse. Instead of leaping up, he sat there, howling with laughter, as all his mates pointed at him and screamed, as if he’d just pulled off a spectacular comic coup.

  ‘I’d pay a hundred to get out,’ said Josh.

  I glanced nervously towards the door again. The enormous bloke happened to be looking in at the same time. He caught my eye and sneered at me.

  ‘You might have to,’ I said.

  Josh followed my gaze. ‘I’m not scared of him.’

  ‘Ehm … yes you are.’

  ‘You didn’t let me finish: I’m not scared of him more than I’m scared of everyone else in here.’

  We huddled together for safety. The band were showing no sign of starting, and there were people wandering all over the stage and knocking into the drum kit. I hadn’t seen Chali at all. I had a sudden premonition of a really terrible evening ahead and me being blamed for everything – whether we stayed or went.

  Suddenly, stumbling slightly as he entered, Finn appeared. My overwhelming relief at seeing his handsome face was tempered with the fact that I wished he wasn’t wearing a duffel coat and carrying a large satchel. It was like going on a date with Tucker Jenkins, without the raw sex appeal.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, forcing his way through the throng with the satchel. Then he was standing in front of me, pink-cheeked and messy-looking, his black curly hair all over the place.

  ‘Hello,’ I said, suddenly shy. It seemed for a second as though he was going to kiss me on the cheek, and he kind of leaned forward, and I jerked backwards at the wrong moment and hit my nose on his glasses.

  Kate started to giggle.

  ‘Hello, Finn.’

  He turned to see her with her little tight trousers on.

  ‘Oh, hello – you look, ehm, nice.’

  ‘I don’t sleep at the office you know.’

  ‘Yes, well, OK,’ I said quickly. I didn’t want my date walking in and flirting with my flatmate, if that was all right with everyone.

  ‘You look nice, too,’ he said to me instantly. ‘Here, I brought you these.’

  He opened his satchel and brought out a box of chocolates. I stared at him in amazement.

  ‘Well, if it’s going to be a “proper” date,’ he said, apologetically, and pushed them into my hands.

  ‘Chocks! Top hole!’ said Josh. ‘I mean, ehm, wicked!’

  I stood there in the crowded pub, holding the slightly battered box. ‘Thank you. But, you know, where’s my corsage?’

  ‘Aha,’ he said, and reached into his satchel again, fishing out a tiny sprig of heather wrapped in tinfoil.

  ‘Some mad old Scottish woman outside wouldn’t leave me alone.’

  ‘Sounds like’, whispered Josh to me, ‘the mad old Scottish woman knew a good thing when she saw it.’

  I slapped him away like a fly, and let Finn stick the heather in my buttonhole. Then we stared at each other again, grinning like idiots. I was ridiculously chuffed.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ I finally asked him.

  ‘Let the lady buy a drink on our first date? Of course not!’

  ‘You know this is a “proper” date, not a “sexist” date, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, I forgot. Let the woman buy a drink on the first date?’

  ‘Let the man get kneed in the bollocks on the first date?’

  ‘Pint of bitter?’

  ‘You’ll be lucky. Warm watery lager?’

  ‘Mmm, yes, please.’

  As I got back from the bar, there was an enormous roar from the other end of the pub, and masses of people swarmed across the room. We followed in their wake, ending up in the crush down one end, where the stage was set up – the stage being about the size of a bath, into which had somehow been crammed a frontman, two big stacks of keyboards, a DJ with turntables
and, at the back, Chali – a vision in see-through scarlet (part of me thought ‘I wonder if she knows it’s see-through?’ before mentally hitting myself on the forehead for being an idiot) – and an extremely tall black woman, also in scarlet. They looked fantastic. The two boys on the keyboard and the frontman, however, looked ridiculous. It was impossible to see the DJ, because he had a hat pulled down over his face, but the frontman was wearing a silver suit c/o Martin Fry 1984 and had hugely magnified pores. I glanced at the others, warily, but before anyone had a chance to say anything, the guy in the silver suit leaned over the front of the stage, propped one skinny shank on the speaker and yelled:

  ‘AAAAAGH! FLAY ME! SLAY ME! DON’T FORGET TO PAY ME! SHOVE ME! LOVE ME! WITH A PLASTIC GLOVE – EE!’

  ‘Cripes,’ I heard Josh say behind me.

  The DJ made some retro scratching noises.

  ‘BITE ME! FIGHT ME! TRY AND EXTRADITE ME!’

  Finn and I nodded in appreciation at his syllable count.

  ‘USE ME! ABUSE ME! PUT MY FINGERS IN THE SOCKET AND FUSE ME …’

  ‘Ooh, nasty scan.’

  The noise was unbelievable. I could hear my eardrums rattle up and down. I kept an eye on Chali to see when she got to do her bit, but she was languidly dancing as if she was the most pissed-off person in the world – i.e., like a proper backing singer.

  ‘PRICK ME! LICK ME! YOU CAN TRY AND DICK ME …’

  ‘Here comes the catchy chorus,’ I predicted to Finn.

  ‘’COS I HATE MYSELF AND I WANNA DIE/I CUT MYSELF AND I WANNA DIE/I HATE MYSELF AND I WANNA DIE/I’M ALL ALONE AND I WANNA DIE!’

  The crashing keyboards rose to a great crescendo.

  ‘WANNA DIE!’ trilled Chali and the tall girl. ‘WANNA DIE! WANNA DIE!’

  Then everything cut off in a big wail of fake feedback. The singer took an elaborate bow.

  ‘HELLO, KING’S CROSS!’ he shouted ‘IT’S GREAT TO BE HERE!’

  The crowd went wild, except for us four, who just stared at him.

  ‘I don’t think that man wants to die at all,’ said Kate eventually. ‘Which is disappointing, as I, for one, would be very happy to see him dead.’

  ‘It’s kind of like Nirvana, isn’t it?’ said Finn. ‘If they had never learned to play the guitar and, ehm, were, you know … shit.’

  ‘Chali’s good, though,’ I said loyally.

  ‘Yes, she is … I especially liked her “wanna dies”.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Now!’ The singer was still yelling. ‘This is a song about how the state, right, it really tries to grind you down, right. So, just do your own thing, yeh?’

  ‘I thought so,’ said Josh.

  ‘No, really, I’m sure those O-levels were quite handy,’ I assured him.

  ‘No, no, I mean, I thought I recognized him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He sounded different, of course, but, yes … it’s Bladen-Start all right. I was in his house at school!’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes, definitely. What was his first name again …? Bladen-Start, Bladen-Start. Oh, yes – Tristram, that’s it.’

  ‘Really?’ I said again. ‘Fantastic!’

  Onstage, Tristram was hollering over a drum and bass back beat:

  ‘DON’T LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY/ IT’S ONLY BULLSHIT ANYWAY/SO GO GET PISSED AND HAVE SOME FUN/DON’T MAKE YOUR BED OR PHONE YOUR MUM …’

  The crowd was going crazy.

  ‘Thick as two short planks,’ yelled Josh. ‘His dad had to practically build a new college to get him into Oxford.’

  ‘SCHOOL’S FOR WIMPS AND THE CONFORMERS/FUCK ALL STUDENTS AND SIXTH FORMERS/LIVE YOUR OWN LIFE ON THE STREETS/ALL YOU NEED ARE DRUGS AND BEATS!’

  ‘Yayy,’ shouted the crowd.

  ‘This sucks demon cock,’ said Kate. I filled her in on what Josh had told me and her eyes gleamed.

  ‘Go, Tristram!’ she yelled, and burst out laughing.

  ‘YOU DON’T HAVE TO! YOU DON’T HAVE TO! YOU DON’T HAVE TO! IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE IT!’

  ‘Yeh!’ yelled Chali, elegantly raising her arms.

  ‘Shall we dance?’ said Finn at my elbow.

  ‘What??’

  ‘You know … we’re on a date … Isn’t dancing the law?’

  Tristram appeared to be trying to have sex with one of the speakers. The row at the front were hopping up and down trying to grab hold of his legs.

  ‘OK?’ I said tentatively.

  Ceremoniously, Finn led me to the back of the crush. This end of the bar was comparatively quiet, away from all the spitting. Dumping the bags in a nasty pool of something, he bowed, then took me in a traditional dancing pose.

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  ‘Dancing,’ he said, whirling me round.

  ‘Finn!’

  ‘You’ll enjoy it more if you stop struggling.’

  ‘Boys always say that though,’ I yelled at him from the end of his arm, but he paid no notice and twirled me around again. Our pace was about a quarter of the beat that was lashing out from the stage, but fortunately everyone ignored us – they probably thought we were somebody’s parents. I decided to give myself up to the moment and let myself be hurled about. Finn was an unexpectedly good dancer, and I enjoyed the experience of not being self-conscious and worrying about the music – (1) because what was playing wasn’t music, and (2) we were so unhip that to this crowd we were invisible anyway.

  ‘Where did you learn to dance?’ I asked him breathlessly as he bent me back over his knee to the final chords of Tristram shouting:

  ‘FUCK! FUCK! AND THEN SOME!’

  Finn shrugged.

  ‘Well, the boys on the football team stomped on my glasses, so my mum signed me up for dancing lessons instead.’

  ‘And did that help your standing with the boys on the football team?’

  He winced at the memory. ‘I think I’m the reason why they took away free glasses on the NHS. I must have gone through five pairs that year alone.’

  ‘Well, never mind – most of those boys are probably in prison now.’

  ‘Actually, I keep bumping into them in the City, hollering for bottles of Cristal and slapping waitresses on the arse.’

  ‘Oh, did you go to private school?’

  ‘Scholarship.’ He grimaced. ‘Little Jewish scholarship boy. Really, you do get used to it. I wash my hair in the toilet even now.’

  ‘Were you a boarder?’

  ‘Yep. Banged up at eight for a ten stretch.’

  I squeezed his arm sympathetically.

  ‘It’s all over now, you’re free to go.’

  He smiled. ‘I know. And at least I know how to do THIS!’ Without warning, as Tristram crashed into another song, he flung me over his arms and into a dramatic bent-back pose, and held me there. I looked up at him – he was smiling at me, and his dark hair fell over his eyes. For a very short split second, everything around seemed to go very quiet, and I thought he was going to kiss me. And for a very short split second, even stranger, I found that I wanted him to.

  ‘Yo ho!’ yelled Josh. ‘You two seem to be having fun. Shall we join in, Skates?’

  We straightened up immediately.

  ‘OK,’ said Kate. ‘Although I’m due in Antwerp at 10 a.m.’

  ‘Oh, hang on,’ said Josh, wandering off. ‘I want to say hi to Tristram again.’

  ‘I didn’t want to dance really,’ said Kate. ‘Can I go home now, please?’

  The band stopped playing peremptorily.

  ‘WE’RE TAKING A SHORT BREAK NOW,’ hollered Tristram. ‘BUT I’LL BE OVER BY THE BAR IF ANYONE WANTS TO GIVE ME A BLOW JOB.’ The crowd pissed themselves.

  ‘UNLESS, OF COURSE, YOU’RE AN A&R MAN, WHEREUPON WE’LL SUCK YOURS.’

  ‘Maybe I won’t go and say hello after all,’ said Josh.

  Chali came dashing up to us, with her usual tribe of filthy supplicants in tow.

  ‘Hey there! I’m so glad you came!’

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nbsp; ‘You were fantastic,’ I said. ‘And you look brilliant.’ Which, at least, was true.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘This is Stitches, Cockroach, Wayne and the Weed Boy.’

  ‘Hey.’ We nodded.

  ‘These are the guys that had the party,’ she explained to them. One raised his hand in an exhausted fashion.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ Chali asked Finn mischievously.

  ‘Very much so.’ He smiled, looking at me. ‘Thanks for asking us along. You’re singing brilliantly.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Oh, here, have you met Sha?’

  Chali’s singing partner had segued up beside her, sipping a tall drink through a straw. Sha raised her eyebrows fractionally at us, which is all you have to do when you look like Naomi Campbell. Then her eyes lingered on Josh, who had just let his floppy blond fringe drop into his beer, and was wiping it out of his eyes with his fingers. She whispered something to Chali, who shrugged her shoulders and beckoned me over.

  I was prepared for the question.

  ‘No, he’s not … probably,’ I whispered to Chali.

  ‘Wow – how did you …’

  Josh was thoughtfully licking his beery finger and holding it up to the wind.

  ‘… Never mind.’ She shook her head at Sha, who walked straight up to him.

  ‘Are you hanging around after the gig?’ she purred.

  ‘What?’ said Josh. ‘Er, no, I don’t think – Ow!’

  I glanced away innocently.

  ‘Ehm, possibly …’

  ‘Good. Wait for me,’ she said, then turned round and stalked off.

  Josh’s eyes were on stalks. ‘Gosh – do you think …? Why do you think she wants me to wait?’

  ‘She’s probably a lawyer in her spare time and wants you to help with the legwork,’ said Kate snidely.

  ‘You’ve pulled, mate,’ said Chali.

  ‘Have I? I mean, do you think …? Gosh!’ said Josh, and lapsed into a happy stupefaction.

  ‘Oh God, I really am going home,’ said Kate, right in front of Chali. ‘I just can’t take it any more. Sorry, no offence.’

  Chali regarded her coolly.

  ‘Sorry, who are you?’

  Finn and I winced at each other, but Kate merely turned the chilly icemaidenometer up to eleven and announced, ‘I’ll just head out into a dangerous area and catch an unlicensed cab on my own then, shall I, Josh?’