Earworm

by Colin Varney

  EARWORM

  Published by Margaret River Press in 2018

  Copyright © Colin Varney 2018

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission in writing from the publisher of this book.

  Margaret River Press

  Web: www.margaretriverpress.com

  email: info@margaretriverpress.com

  Cover design: Debra Billson

  Editor: Kate O’Donnell

  Typesetting: Michael Mysik

  Set in Janson Text, 10.5 pt

  Printed by McPherson's Printing

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of Australia

  trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN: 978-0-6482039-6-4

  Colin Varney

  EARWORM

  Colin Varney spent a feckless youth—and much of a feckless middle-age—drumming in pub bands. Not musically adept enough to play covers, he was reduced to collaborating on original songs and was therefore unable to relinquish his day job. He now finds himself drawn to writing about music and musicians.

  His short stories have appeared in Meanjin, Kill Your Darlings, Island and Southerly. He has written articles for The Lifted Brow and satire for Adelaide Review and Tasmanian Times. His children’s book, Jellylegs, is widely used to promote protective behaviours.

  He completed a Masters in creative writing at the University of Tasmania, mentored by Danielle Wood. Earworm is his first novel.

  colinvarney.wordpress.com

  For Helen

  — a love song.

  Track 1

  INTRODUCTION

  “Here’s one that needs no introduction.”

  The singer grips the microphone with both hands.

  One! … Two! … Three! … Four!

  Carousel keyboard. Gimcrack backbeat. Spot fires of applause. Then recognition hits and a roar rides the hall. The bass burbles and the percussion plunges into a coronary rumba. Guitar gate-crashes, riffing off the merry-go-round melody. Cheers and whoops roll and rumble through the— let’s face it—modest audience. This is the one they’ve been waiting for. Everyone succumbs to the Big Hit and—bam!— I’m in four hundred heads.

  Yeah. I said yeah.

  I’m fervid in the id; a-go-go in the ego. Skating on the dark ice of the subconscious. Feeding fantasy. Nourishing nostalgia.

  Some visits are brief. Dropping by to say hi. I’ll be there while the band, JayJay, perform me on stage, only to be shunted by the next number. Other visits are homecomings: triumphant returns. Feeling cosy in the consciousness. Rubbernecking—if I had a neck. Seeing how things have changed. A new paranoia here, a clutch of regrets cluttering that corner. A divorce—that’s sad. But also a promising new relationship. All right now!

  For some, I’m a long-term lodger. When the performance of me begins, I’m already there. I burgeon brighter, snuggle in more comfortably. We’re closer than a folk duo, brotherly as a barbershop quartet. They don’t always know I’m in residence—sometimes they find themselves tapping their toes to something but they don’t know what. They’re asked to stop whistling even though they’re convinced they weren’t. That’s me, crouching in their cache. Ever-present. Effervescent.

  They’re the ones that screamed for me during the lull between numbers.

  “Empty Fairground! Emmmpty Fairrrground!”

  I’m voltage in the veins, arcing in the arteries. I ripple their hips, sashay their shoulders.

  I’m tethered to treasured times. That cautious kiss risked during my chorus on a murmurous summer night; that fondle ventured; that grope gambled. That close dance at a mythic party in a distant decade. The thrill of hearing me in the back seat of a stolen car. The first harsh swig of booze as I warble from the radio. Friendships revisited, break-ups rebooted. Virginity revived. I’m awash with acne and tufty stubble, fake ID and training bras. I’m the dorky photo on the probationary driver’s licence.

  The lurch and surge of my beat is a pace for living: leashed urgency; a freedom of spirit barely restrained. My lyrics—pleasingly opaque with firecracker flashes and an undercurrent of melancholy—offer an attitude, an axiom. The more meaning I manifest, the greater the grip. The more I express a facet of a listener’s character, the harder the hold. They invest in me, and I give dividends of identity.

  Yeah, c’mon.

  Whirligigs of noise hector the humid air. Despite the swelter, couples draw closer. Hands squeeze, bodies cleave, Siamese. Meeting each other’s soft gaze. Ooh, baby baby. Because deep down, beneath the wreathing, wraith-like words and barrel organ groove, I’m a Love Song.

  And I’m busy, busy, busy, Miss Lizzy. It’s not just these four hundred fresh awakenings—there are thousands around the globe at any one time hearing, humming or hypothesising about me. I rattle in their attics, shimmy in their psyche. Ahhh, take me. Imagine you’re poking at an anthill. Thousands of black dots scribble around you. You have them all in sight, but if you wanted to, you could concentrate on just one. Trace its squiggly progress. When you get bored, switch to another. Of course, humans are more complex.

  Often.

  There’s Marla—mature-age journalism student. She interviewed Jones and Jones—the two gentlemen who gave birth to me—a week or so ago. All the usual questions about the heyday of JayJay and this reunion show, about them being twins and how they composed me while separated by an ocean. There’s a jolt of joy as I jostle between her ears, but she’s conflicted. This is not the version she’s familiar with. At the back of her brain she hears the speed metal cover of me she loves so much. That deranged arrangement. Being in her head makes me schizoid.

  It’s widely known that the Joneses are twins. So why is Johnny Jones, the singer, casting obscurely ardent glances at Morris Jones, the keyboardist? He’s considering pashing him. Tongue tussling. More on that later.

  Spencer stands close to Marla, gripping his phone. He doesn’t like to like me but he can’t help himself. I fill him with longing and trussed lust. He’s afraid of what he is about to do. His knuckles whiten around the phone. I urge him on, nudging his need for revenge.

  Lily leaps and squeals. She’s overexcited. Adrenaline floods her, short-circuiting her sparking intelligence. Sometimes I feel I need space from Lily. She’s too clingy. She knows more about me than I know myself. It’s creepy and unnerving. The sooner she finishes her PhD on me, the better.

  Ahhh, Rosemary. She’s oppressed by the heat. It’s a pressure enclosing her. I’ve been reacquainting myself with Rosemary. I was once her favourite song, fused to that long-gone summer when she couldn’t stop listening to me. There’s a Rosemary mentioned in my final verse: that’s what hooked her. She’s been indulging in me again recently but I’m crippled in her mind. She has a vinyl single of me and it’s badly scratched. It makes me drunk and jerky. Wounded. And right now she’s hardly registering me. I’m snubbed. She scans the crowd. Wiry red hair filigreed around her damp face; fevered eyes. She’s worried about her daughter.

  Concerned for Nicole.

  There’s Bryce, Nicole’s boyfriend. He’s looking for her too, shoving between punters, presto agitato. His broad handsomeness is harrowed; his forehead creates canals of sweat. He swipes it free, squinting, seeking. He cries her name but his distress is swallowed by my bellicose decibels.

  “Nicole!”

  Where is she? Nicole should be in da house. The hall is empty without her. All this fervour for me pales and puffs away. I should be exploding in her head.

  I call Nicole home. Chez Nic. Her
consciousness is Access All Areas. Her mind is my playground, my lounge … although there’ve been some renovations recently. Usually I suffuse Nicole. Dwelling in her cells, twining in her mind.

  Ah, there she is, in the women’s toilets. Cowering in a cubicle. Slipping away from me. She’s in terrible danger. And there’s nothing I can do to help.

  Nicole.

  Lemme tell you ’bout Nicole.

  Track 2

  SOLO: NICOLE

  When Nicole got home from work she became aware that the mood of the house had shifted to a minor key. Something subtle but essential was different, like hearing an efficient cover of a favourite tune. She shed her waitressing weeds, that detested uniform with its frilly pleats and indelible reeks of Parmesan and pasta. Mum sat in the lounge, pretending to read a Stephen King. Her eyeline grazed the top of it and wallowed in the middle distance. Her features were an emotional mash-up. Careworn creases counterpointed an uneasy state of euphoria. The dried hide of her face, leathered by surf, sun and sand, made her appear older, yet tonight she was rejuvenated.

  Dad was off-stage. The crime novel he’d been reading was face down, crack-spined, on his armchair. Nonplussed Nic: her dad was a night owl. She often heard him pottering about long after she’d retired.

  “Has Dad gone to bed already?”

  Mum was abruptly engrossed in reading, burrowing deep into the supernatural. A querulous vocalisation indicated she could not be disturbed.

  As Nicole poured herself a glass of water something gouged into her bare foot. She prised a shard of china from her sole, where it had left a pit but not broken the skin. As she tossed it into the bin she noticed the shattered remains of the World’s Best Dad cup she had bought for Father’s Day several years back. She pursed her lips ruefully: Dad’s favourite mug.

  As Mum passed behind her on her way to bed she appeared taller, as if she’d shrugged off a stoop she never had.

  Next morning, Dad’s absence became fortissimo.

  “Is Dad ill?” Nicole asked.

  Mum’s face crunched into consternation. “He’s not here,” she snapped staccato, then turned on her heel to face the sink.

  “So where is he?”

  Mum bang-shang-a-langed some cutlery without washing it.

  Nicole grabbed her mobile and thumbed Dad’s number, but heard the ringtone tootling in his bedroom. Phone alone.

  Brusque breakfast. Abrasive scrape of blade on toast. The sip of coffee too loud. External noises were muffled, radio announcers muttered beneath their breath. Monotone Mum; curt Nic. Can you feel it, baby, can you feel it? It was a relief when Mum slung her CSIRO lanyard around her neck and set off for work. Her over-bright lipstick was gaudy for a research administrator, but she had never totally surrendered to professionalism.

  Nicole crept up the hallway and eased open the door of her parents’ room. Dad’s side of the bed hadn’t been slept in.

  She cast back to her last image of her father, fishing for clues to his non-appearance. Ah, memory. My plaything. We harmonise. I’m Simon to its Garfunkel, Don Everly to its Phil, Barry Gibb to its … well, you get the score. The day before she’d almost collided with him in the hallway as she’d bustled to work. He’d worn an abstracted air, chin lifted, listening for requiems. Pupils adrift, brow creased. He was holding a child’s drawing: a picture of a family posed in front of a house. Nicole recognised it as one of her own. When Dad saw her, he reactivated. He pecked her farewell. As she turned for the door she thought she heard him singing beneath his breath, then realised he’d spoken.

  “Nicole, are you happy?”

  “Of course not. I’m going to work.”

  His grin embered and died. “You and Bryce, hey?” he said. “My little girl’s growing up.”

  As she departed, he raised an arm to wave. The drawing crackled in the air. His smile was wistful. Woeful.

  Now, Nicole snatched the crime novel from the armchair and scanned the last page Dad had read. The alcoholic detective was racing across town to uncover the identity of the mutilated girl in the morgue. Slab kebab.

  Dad didn’t come home from work. Mum continued to give off scrambled signals: cagey, doleful, discordantly buoyant. As the evening wore on Nicole watched her steadily age. Her curls unfurled, lazing limply, their ruddiness corroding. Her invisible yoke returned, becoming weightier. Nicole girded herself to confront Mum, to demand to know what was happening, but at the last moment, something made her quail. An ineffable forbidding. She found herself staring at the broken china in the bin. What had seemed like evidence of an accident suddenly appeared more ominous. Had kitchenware been used as a weapon? And wielded by whom? Fumbled cup? Or rocket crockery? Chalice aforethought.

  Dishes piled in the sink. When they were done they lacked the speck of glop Dad invariably left on every plate. The pot plants he tended showed signs of wilting. Nicole became acutely aware of his possessions cluttering the house: a toothbrush, a music stand, a half-written song. A disc from a box set still in the DVD player, shelves of vinyl and CDs. She noticed his favourite guitar was missing. That night, she had a nightmare: Dad grabbing clothes in haste, bundling them to his chest. But they’re a curious combination he could never wear—swimming trunks, a cummerbund and what looked like a gimp suit.

  Next afternoon she rang home because she was going to be late from university and her father’s voice asked her to leave a message. After the beep she left a suppressed sob.

  A few days later, Nicole left her tutor’s room and there he was, lingering in the hallway. It took a beat to recognise her father encased in a suit and tie, collar ironed, unruly hair disciplined. She knew what that meant and she stiffened, a chill chiming her spine. He was clutching a floppy, gift-wrapped parcel. He held back, shuffling shyly, pretending to read something on a noticeboard, while she hastily farewelled friends. As she approached, his joyous beam plus the sorrow in his eyes made a medley of his face. He asked if she was peckish and seemed fearful of her reply. When she said yes, he deflated with gratitude.

  Expensive restaurant, views across the river. A diluted late August sunset Spandexed the dishwater Derwent. On the far bank the suburbs of Hobart had already ceded to trees and mountains. Nicole was aware her father smelt different. The cheap reek of his aftershave made her left eye squint. He poured exorbitantly priced wine into her glass. His voice vivace, as if he had too much to tell her, running ahead of himself, sentences degrading into scat. He embraced many subjects but not the one she wanted. Every time she asked why he’d left he forced a grin and veered away, faking an interest in the view.

  He pushed the parcel towards her, eyeing her expectantly as she tore it open. It was a dress designed by Paul McCartney’s daughter. He insisted she stand and hold it against herself. His eyes brimmed with fondness as he muttered how proud he was of her. He lapsed into unexpected silence, nodding in affirmation. Nicole was baffled. Me too. What was all this avid affection, this inappropriate passion? His actions threw me, can’t you see? Threw me, yessiree. They set up a dissonance, like an orchestra tuning up. Or a distant ensemble of apes practising the classics. Marmosets on marimba. Chimp timpani. It shivered my concentration. The eatery teetered.

  “I’m watering the plants,” she told him. Then she remembered the book that lay broken-backed on the chair. “Oh, and it’s not his daughter.”

  “What?”

  “In the morgue. That book you were reading.”

  He gave her a quizzical look, drenched in sadness. “Funny. I was sure it would be.”

  He sucked a slug of wine.

  The dress didn’t suit her and was a size too big.

  Over the next week gifts began to appear on Bryce’s doorstep. Bags of groceries, bottles in brown paper, CDs. The groceries luxurious, the vino vintage, the CD by an artist she’d loved when she was twelve but hated now.

  Sweat to forget. Exert to divert. Ah, c’mon. Nicole at the gym, taut, trim. Wheeze seethe—the rowing machine. Burr whirr—the stationary bike. Clatter clang
—the weights. Nicole in control, fat sizzling free, skin tightening. Heart thrusting: rhythm section of her body setting up a driving jive. Not admitting it to herself, but feeling a little ooh la la, as Goldfrapp said. Each huff expelling her cares. Each puff ejecting her troubles.

  That was the plan, Stan. But I sensed her ragged concentration. Thoughts of her father insisted like backing vocals. A figure blurred past her shoulder and she knew it was him. Dad. She twisted to look. No, it was a younger man, cling-wrapped in Lycra, hair porcupined by product. Her dad would have joked about the sweatband and the mobile phone connections scaffolding the stranger’s face. She scanned the room jerkily, stumbling against the relentlessness of the machine. She sensed he was there somewhere, his presence like a persistent sound you don’t usually register—thrum of traffic or tick of hi-hat.

  She didn’t know why she was affected like this, but I did. I saw the memory bubbling from below, skimming consciousness but never fully surfacing. Its essence soaking through her. The memory of Mum’s voice, hushed as a nocturne. Little Nicole unblinking, as Mum spins stories from distant summers. Other children gag when parents unveil their long-ago love lives, but Nicole basks and bathes in family fairy tales. Open maw gathering drool. Her mother whispers of dark cinema nights, of losing the plot of the film because she was hoping Dad’s hand might venture to adventure. A piquant waft from his jaw moistens her eyes and catches at the back of her throat. Little Nic is so entranced that next day she draws her parents in cinema seats, wavy lines of odour winding from Dad’s chin and seeking Mum’s nose. She shades the auditorium with graphite night and sketches indistinct blobs of faceless moviegoers. She wears her pencils down giving her parents bright green and orange clothes and fluorescent pink flesh. They glow, they irradiate.

  The first gift Mum bought Dad was a bottle of expensive cologne. From then on, she made sure only subtle scents graced his face. But now Dad was on his own, snatching aftershave off the supermarket shelf. At the restaurant he’d stunk of economy. And cheap scent, no matter what the brand, has a generic character. As blokes passed her in the gym, chins lacquered with eau-de-crap, Nicole hardly registered the redolence but it roused memories. She smelt her father all around her. Her head swivelling, searching.