Guest

by SJ Bradley

  ‘You know I’m dyslexic,’ Frankie whined.

  They had been up since before five, all of them, spending more than a day on the road already, and all that without yet playing a gig.

  ‘Dyslexic enough to only draw eight spaces for Terminator.’ Even with the early start, Stick’s skin was new as a petal. The boy was a genetic wonder. Twenty-six, but looking like a lad in his last day at sixth form.

  ‘Anybody want to make a stop?’ Lemmers, the driver, threw this over his shoulder. ‘I know a little village about half an hour away, with this mom-and-pop bakery that does these great pretzels. All vegan.’ Lemmers filled the seat solidly, all bulk and shoulders, in a CND t-shirt that he’d been wearing ever since the Cold War.

  ‘Lemmers,’ Frankie shouted. ‘The human guidebook! Knows every corner of Europe.’

  ‘I bloody love touring with Lemmers!’ Stick called.

  ‘Lemmers!’ they chanted. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

  Romey, the fourth person in the back, who was sitting behind Samhain and had been silent until this point, joined in with the voice of a damp chainsaw starting. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

  This last, was tour deadweight. Not in the band and unable to drive, Romey was along for the tour, not for any other useful reason. They had brought him along for the sake of their endless affection for him, and pity. Officially, they’d told him he was there to mind and sell the merchandise, because they knew Romey wouldn’t come if he’d known they all felt sorry for him. Poor Romey, who lived on his own, had nobody to go away with, and never went anywhere.

  ‘Is that a yes for the stop, then? Because if we don’t, it’s about another four hours to the squat.’

  Their driver was a man who seemed to know every road in Europe without needing to look at a map. Fifteen years of hands on the wheel, driving DIY and punk bands all over the continent, had taught him every place to stop in front of hunger or thirst, each spot with a hidden vegan option, and each place with a clean toilet and sink. You were always safe with Lemmers, the human AA Roadmap.

  ‘Yes, stop,’ Samhain said. ‘I could do to get a bite.’

  After the pretzels, silence.

  Stick and Frankie leaned back in their seats, becoming propped-up scarecrows; Stick was further forward than he had been on the earlier leg. Every time they hit a bump in the road, his knees touched Samhain’s.

  Lemmers had this music on with a girl and a harp. It sounded as though it had been recorded in a barn, and she’d just happened to be singing whilst milking a cow, and the cow was just out of reach of the microphone. You could almost hear it moving its cloven hoof in the straw.

  He fell back to sleep, head resting against the window.

  Out front of the squat, and four hours later, a rangy man in a falling-apart vest strung rope lights amongst the branches in a large and overgrown garden. He looked as though he might have been stretched on a rack.

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You must be one of the bands, right? Go in.’ Night was starting to fall.

  There were two dogs, whip-tailed and dark, with fur that looked like something from a shoe brush. In the kitchen, half a dozen people were occupied in something. A man stirring a steaming stew-pot. A woman stapling fanzines on the table. ‘Hello,’ they said.

  The band passed through, carrying their guitars. Into the hall, past an open doorway with four mattresses on the floor, and they hadn’t even got to the gig room, which was down two steps at the end of the corridor, before Lemmers ran into somebody he knew.

  ‘Lemmers!’ A man in black jeans and a leather vest, with a bountiful maritime beard, threw ham-hock arms around their driver. ‘You old tour dog, you!’

  They stood with their arms around each other, slapping backs as though trying to beat the air out of line-caught fish.

  ‘Tonight,’ the man said effortfully, with a thick accent, ‘tonight, we drink!’ He produced a bottle of Buckfast, smiling. ‘I want all of you to feel at home,’ he went on. ‘Because any friend of Lemmers, is a friend of mine. Glasses!’ he roared. ‘Welcome to my restaurant!’

  Off he went, wobbling towards the kitchen.

  Somewhere between locking the van and arriving at the bottom of the stairs, Lemmers’ bushy hair seemed to have sprung up like a lion’s. ‘Lukas,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Old friend.’

  ‘Now, then.’ The friend reappeared. Shot glass, wine glass, highball, mug, mug, tumbler, shot. Lukas carried a tray of mismatched and still good-enough glasses, each brimming with maroon liquid. ‘Fine service, for fine people.’ He gave each willing hand a drink. ‘Cheers!’

  Frankie was wearing a louche grin, like a man just freed from jail. ‘Well, Lemmers, all I’ll say is this. If we keep on bumping into your friends on this tour, we are all going to have a very, very, very, very...’ he paused, to knock the Buckie back from the shot glass, and winced: ‘A very good time.’

  ‘Friends of yours brought this.’ The friend leaned over, to refill the glasses. ‘You know the boys from Patrick Stewart The Band? Came through here, two days ago. No job too big, they said, if it is going to help our friend the legendary Lemmers.’

  ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’ Romey began chanting. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’

  This, Samhain said to himself as he raised his glass and then sank it, this is touring. He watched a grin spread, warm as marmalade on toast, over Romey’s worried, tense little face. Smiles equally spreading over Frankie and Stick’s faces, as though out here and among friends, their worries had all melted away, like sugar in tea. This, he told himself, this is what true happiness is. ‘Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers! Lemmers!’ he shouted.

  The dogs yapped and barked, chasing their tails.

  That night was the clearest sound they’d ever had.

  He didn’t know how she’d done it, the girl. Kick drum thumping through the speakers; his and Frankie’s guitars separate, and distinguishable. He could hear his own voice coming back to him through a monitor by his feet.

  Frankie’s too, more thick and raspy than ever, by the speaker just next to him, and Samhain started to think, funny that it should sound so close, when Frankie is all the way over there – by the windows.

  The crowd were all right up in it, tattooed black sleeves and dancing. A woman with grey dreadlocks had a can in her hand and her arm in the air; face all mushed up, and smiling.

  A man – fat, bald and shiny – stood aside from the throng, singing every single word. They were all doing it, the whole crowd. A young lad with a dog on a big of string danced with one foot almost touching Frankie’s, while his dog, a large blondish thing, quivered by the speaker stack. Voices so loud they might carry the whole song, if the band were to suddenly stop.

  But Stick never would. Face slippery with sweat, wearing that joyful-sex look that he wore when he was drumming. Eyes closed, smiling, slowly shaking his head.

  Stick, always there. Forever smiling, no matter how many days you spent on the road. And Frankie, over there with the bass touching his belt buckle. Frankie, good, solid, dependable Frankie, who you could rely on no matter what. These two best boys were the finest you could ever find anywhere. You could not find better bandmates. Samhain knew that for a fact. He took a step towards the mic.

  ‘Keep on moving faster...’

  He’d sung these words so many times that if you wrote them out, they’d fill a phone book.

  Silence. The old man stared, jaw hanging slack. A clatter of drum stick on the kit. Samhain’s voice shouted out into the nothing. The end of the song had caught him by surprise, somehow.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  Laughter: the crowd clapping, cheering. ‘Est-a-mos!’ they shouted. ‘Est-a-mos! Estamos! Estamos!’

  All the way around the room, the chant went up. A clap on every syllable. ‘Estamos! Estamos! Estamos! Estamos!’

  Samhain felt a hand on his shoulder. The grey-haired woman leaned forward, grabbing his upper arm with bony fingers. ‘Y
ou guys are the best,’ she said.

  2.

  Without even being fully awake, Samhain knew he was not home.

  Bed. Floor. Mattress. Sleeping bag. He wriggled his toes.

  He opened his eyes, and looked at the other bodies sleeping nearby. Frankie was closest, snoring, as usual. The smallest dog, a black-haired wiry terrier, lay curled between Romey and Stick.

  Somebody was making coffee. The smell of it got him up, and the dog followed.

  ‘Boxy,’ she said. ‘Boxy, here.’ It was Hanna, the sound engineer from last night, snub-nosed and manga-eyed. ‘This dog is such a slut for attention. Always wants to make friends with the touring bands. You want coffee?’

  ‘Please.’

  Sun came into the room from two sides: a large window at the front, and through the side door. The dogs ran in and out, bringing with them the scent of jasmine.

  ‘Pretty sweet squat you’ve got here,’ he said.

  Hanna had the type of face you don’t see too often. Appealing and broad, clear-skinned. It was the kind of face that said, Go on, Tell me things. ‘We’re lucky. There used to be another one, not too far from here, in an area marked for “regeneration,” or gentrification, if you want to call it that, that was evicted two weeks ago. Fifteen people were living there – cops in riot gear went in and hauled them all out. They attacked them with tear gas, and everything. Can you believe it?’

  The coffee tasted of hot tar, and dried out the inside of his mouth like a bush fire. ‘I can. Bunch of fuckers.’ He coughed, and added sugar.

  ‘That’s why we are so crowded here now. Four of them came to live here, and they brought their dogs. So, that’s also why we have so many dogs.’

  Samhain added water from the kettle, but his coffee still looked blacker than an oil well. ‘What about you?’ he said.

  ‘For now, we’re safe. Nobody wants to build luxury flats here, yet. But maybe, one day, once prices have gone up over there, and the developers see that there is more money to be made, here. Eventually, they’ll clear us out, too. But not yet.’

  ‘We’ve got a squat in an old hotel – me and Frankie,’ Samhain said.

  ‘Yeah?’ Hanna climbed into a chair, bare legs folding over the wood like a cricket’s. ‘Do you have, like – chocolates on the pillows, and stuff?’ She was turned right towards him with this eager, fascinated face, that said, Tell me, Tell me, and she smelled gently of coconut oil. ‘How many of you are there?’

  ‘Just three. I noticed it first – found it. The place is hidden away, behind all of these hedges. It’s not even on a main road.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yeah. And when we moved in, we found a load of stuff. All the hotel towels, with the name embroidered in the corner. All their matchbooks, guest soaps, tea trays, all that sort of stuff. It was almost kind of spooky, the way they’d left it. Like they meant to come back later. But then... everything was covered in dust. They must have been gone years.’

  Hanna had a splashing tap laugh. ‘You’re so lucky! Only three of you, in a big place like that. Sometimes I wish we had more space here.’ One of the dogs jumped, slobbering its big stupid tongue all over her face. ‘So, where do you go next, on your tour?’

  ‘I don’t know. Romey’s the one with the tour schedule.’ Written on a sheet of foolscap, folded up into eight and deep in Romey’s back trouser pocket, was the list of dates. With addresses, and all of the promoters’ phone numbers and email addresses written on the back. He and Frankie had given Romey this bit of paper, and started calling him the Tour Manager. It gave him something to do. ‘I do know that we’re playing at an all-dayer in Belgium, with our friends from Nottingham–’

  ‘Yes.’ She poked the table with a dollish finger, sending a surprising aftershock through the wood. ‘I know about this gig. My friend is putting it on. It’s a benefit for the Deep Green Resistance women – the ones who had children by undercover cops, in the eighties. It’s a really good cause. Did you know about it?’

  A feeling started, rising through him as long-journey car nausea. It began in his legs, and left him with a shivery feeling, as though he’d passed through a gastric fever. ‘I didn’t know it was a benefit.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. In the eighties, the police were infiltrating groups all over Europe. There were undercover cops in groups all over Europe, in Britain, in Switzerland, everywhere. They went into the groups and then fed information back to their bosses, to police in their home countries, everywhere. Some of them were in the groups for years – they were supposedly there to gain information only, and maybe to disrupt the activities. They weren’t supposed to get into relationships with the activists. But a lot of them went way over the line of duty, way over. I have heard of four, maybe five women, who had children by these animals, not even knowing they were cops. Can you imagine?’ She rolled a cigarette, flicking bits of tobacco off her fingers. ‘Not only is it bad enough that your group is infiltrated by undercover cops, but to have your body taken too. It’s like being raped by the state.’ She lit up: every word breathed smoke. ‘Wouldn’t you know, the cops have fought just as hard as they can, to keep everything secret. To keep the women in the dark, just like they always have. My friend is trying to raise money, so that there’s enough for a legal fund. She will do it. I know how strong these women are.’

  He watched her, poised over the glass ashtray, spitting these things out as though her vehemence could make a difference, any difference at all, as though knowing it was wrong and putting it all right were one and the same thing. As though one led automatically to the other, instead of being a long, exhausting and bitter struggle, where the unarmed and dispossessed used as their weapons photocopied flyers and banners made out of bedsheets, fighting an enemy that had money, and uniforms, and enough resources to keep the war going forever. An enemy that was as well-organised, and more powerful than any government.

  Samhain felt dishcloth-wrung, as though he had been used for cleaning pans. ‘Good luck to her,’ he said, finally.

  ‘More coffee?’

  Noises overhead. She looked up, and started pouring before he could tell her another cup wouldn’t make any difference. The tiredness was marrow-deep; it lay in his veins, moving sluggishly along. It lay over him and in him like a second epidermis, a reptile that would never shed its skin, only ever lay heavier, shrink tighter, and hang its weight upon him always.

  ‘That’s Lukas.’ Hanna blew smoke towards the ceiling. ‘He’ll be down in a minute to make you all something to eat.’

  She was not his counsellor, he saw that now. In the coal black tattoos and the way her mouth contorted to blow smoke away; she was a punk, the same as him, and she had her loyalties. She lifted the coffee pot and he saw a tattoo of a city in flames, and knew that anything he said to her would go straight to Lukas, and from Lukas to Lemmers, and from Lemmers to home. In one mistaken step, he could have told everybody a secret that whizzed around inside him like a stuck firework.

  ‘You alright?’ she said. ‘For a minute, you looked miles away.’

  Upstairs, the gurgling of piss in a bowl. The gush; a horse of a man. He pulled a smile up onto his face with a winch and some clockwork. ‘Tired. Bit of tour madness, that’s all.’

  ‘On your second day?’ She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry. One of Lukas’ breakfasts will put you right.’

  The table was well hidden, in a sunny dell overhung by roses, and Lukas kept coming with more plates. Chewy pink strips, hot and crackling like bacon, but not bacon. Beans in a rich sauce, with the taste of tomatoes and molasses. Thick rye bread and olive oil.

  They drank coffee, with the long grass tickling their legs, from a jumble sale of chipped mugs and jam jars. ‘I know how you British like your coffee,’ Lukas said. ‘Like dishwater. For you, I make it the British way.’ The sun was all over them like the first morning of a holiday.

  Romey shovelled food into his mouth with his fingers, as though he hadn’t eaten in weeks. ‘Why do you never get food li
ke this in England?’ he said.

  Lemmers was looking in his pockets for the van key. ‘I blame Tony Blair,’ he said. ‘Better do an idiot check before we go, boys. Nearly time to get back on the road.’

  3.

  Neither Romey, nor Frankie, not Stick, or Samhain, could get the van doors closed.

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ Frankie said. ‘Don’t you do this for a living?’

  Lemmers was the only one who knew how to load it, and he had wandered off somewhere. He’d been gone ages, and none of them knew where he was.

  Nothing was straight in the back, guitars and amps shoved in like clutter into a cupboard, with sleeping bags yawning everywhere. These things, once in carry-bags the size of Coke bags, had become things the expanse of a double-king sized bedspread. Stick was the only one out of all of them who’d managed to get his sleeping bag back into its case.

  ‘This is no good,’ Samhain said. ‘We need to have it all out and start again.’

  ‘Fuck this,’ Romey groaned. He wombled away to the passenger seat, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘One down, three to go,’ Frankie said.

  ‘Come on, lads,’ Samhain said. ‘Sooner we start, sooner it’s done.’

  They had it all out onto the pavement.

  Stick stood with one foot in the gutter, pushing things – the holdall containing all of the leads, Samhain’s nylon guitar bag – back onto the pavement. He was yawning, tired. They all were.

  ‘We need to start with the big stuff,’ Samhain said. ‘Then we can pack all the little stuff like the leads and the bags in the gaps.’

  ‘Whoa, everyone.’ There was a grizzle of grey around Frankie’s chin. The long drives had got into him, as they had to them all, and he was starting to look old. Yet in his eye, mischief still twinkled. ‘Professional at work. Everybody stand back.’

  Behind him, a shop owner rattled shutters open and opened a door, and disappeared inside. All the way along the street, shops were opening.