Elfish was stunned. The laughter grew louder.
“Come on, Elfish,” said May, pulling her sleeve, but Elfish was rooted to the spot. She had a disturbingly vivid picture of Mo and Amnesia listening to her phone calls while lying in bed together and the humiliation this caused her was almost too intense to bear.
“Do your Amnesia imitation for me,” said Mo, and roared and shook with laughter. Then he leapt up on to the stage, tapped his finger on the singer’s microphone to check it was working and announced to the audience that it was now time for Elfish to quote a speech from Shakespeare to them all. The audience, waiting for this moment, went quiet but Mo’s entourage kept on laughing. Elfish stood stock still, blinking back a tear behind the sunglasses she had bought with the money she stole from Cary and Lilac.
sixty-five
THE MOMENT ELFISH dragged her body on stage she knew she was going to fail. Standing in front of the microphone she could not prevent herself from trembling. The whole room was now silent, waiting, but the Queen of Dreams could not remember a word.
The silence deepened. Everyone was staring fixedly at Elfish and a new and more sickening humiliation crept up over her.
“Speech!” called Mo, in mockery, bringing renewed laughter from his friends. Elfish scanned her memory with frantic fear, hope and terror but it was useless. She could not recall a single line of Mercutio’s speech. The revelation about Amnesia had been too upsetting and the stress thus caused had driven the hard-learned Shakespeare right out of her mind. She stood alone in front of the audience, obviously unable to do what she had publicly promised.
In the hall the silence began to break down into a buzz of conversation punctuated by laughter and some shouts of abuse, all of which made Elfish feel worse. Paralysis took hold of her and she was unable either to speak or move.
“Speech!” cried Mo again. His friends laughed and other people started to join in.
“O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you . . .” shouted Shonen, prompting her with the first line, but it was hopeless. No power on earth, and not even Queen Mab, could make Elfish remember the speech.
As Elfish stood in silent ignominy, Mo and Cody roared with laughter. Amnesia could barely contain herself and leant on Mo for support, howling with joy.
Elfish remained frozen and terrorised on stage as the laughter spread. Apart from the few supporters she had in the audience, every person in the room now loudly mocked and jeered at her hopelessly inept performance. She found herself in the middle of a nightmare from which she was unable to escape. There seemed to be no way for Elfish to end the situation. She could not even move. Her limbs were paralysed. She would stand there and be ridiculed for the rest of her life.
Eventually, to save his sister from further humiliation, Aran clambered on to the stage and took hold of Elfish’s arm. He led her off down the stairs at the side and propelled her through the crowd towards the bar. Elfish allowed herself to be led but she was too distraught to respond to his solicitations. She was acutely aware that her dream had gone. It had flown away to the moon. She could not now call her band Queen Mab. All of her endeavours had been for nothing. At the vital moment she had proved herself to be no better than all the people around her whom she had abused for giving up and accepting defeat.
sixty-six
ELFISH LEANT AGAINST the bar, wreathed in dejection.
“Are you all right?” asked Aran, aware that it was a stupid question.
She shook her head miserably.
“Do you want to leave?”
Elfish did not reply, but placed her hand inside Aran’s jacket to remove the small bottle of whisky she knew he was carrying there. Aran, not naturally a generous spirit, let her take it. He could see that all around them people were still looking at Elfish and laughing and he feared that at any moment she might break down entirely. Elfish began pouring the whisky down her throat. Her brother was relieved to see Shonen hurrying towards them. It would surely help if Elfish’s friends rallied round.
Unfortunately, Elfish’s torments were not yet over. Shonen had not come to rally round.
“I’ve just been talking to Mo,” she exclaimed. “He still says you don’t know a fund-raiser. He says you can’t help my theatre group. He says you made it all up. Is this true?”
Deep in the misery of defeat and taken by surprise, Elfish found herself unable to lie.
“Yes,” she said, without expression.
Shonen turned white and spun on her heel, rushing to vomit in the toilet. Elfish immediately found herself confronted by an angry-looking May and Gail.
“Gail says Chevon isn’t moving out of your house and I won’t be able to live there!” shouted May at the top of her voice.
“It’s true,” said Elfish.
“And Mo tells me you’ve never even met Adam,” yelled Gail. “And the talk of benefit gigs for the magazine is a lie.”
Elfish’s eyes were glazing over. Her reply was too quiet to be heard but it was obvious from her demeanour that she was indeed admitting to lying.
There was no letup. Shonen returned from the toilet to join the others in shouting at her. Elfish quailed. Previously she had been prepared to face down these people when the moment came, confident that once her dream was fulfilled she would have the strength to ignore their fury. Now she could not. Her strength and spirit were both dripping away, leaving her empty inside. She could feel her filth and hunger, and her body was protesting violently about her long period of tension, and drug and alcohol abuse.
Aisha strode up. To anyone familiar with her she had the look of a woman who had managed to control her agoraphobia just long enough to leave the house but knew that it would defeat her before she got back. As she approached, her very limbs were shaking and her face was beginning to distort.
“Where’s Mory?” she demanded. “Where is he? He should be here by now.”
Elfish felt unable to answer.
“Is he coming? Mo says you didn’t even speak to him.”
Elfish shook her head, and was forced to endure a fresh torrent of abuse. Aisha, Shonen, Gail and May were all now filled with hate for the woman who had led them on with falsehoods. The room went quiet so that everyone around could hear.
Casaubon, fresh from talking to Mo, marched over to confront Elfish. She saw him coming and felt like an animal trapped in a snare. He pointed a drumstick at her and demanded to know if she had really been in touch with Marcia or was this just another of her lies? When it became obvious that it was, Casaubon’s rage was so immediate and violent that Elfish shrank from him and reached backwards to take her brother’s hand. Casaubon was very large and Elfish was frightened.
“You fucking little bitch,” screamed Casaubon, apparently driven completely mad by the shattered hope of Marcia returning to him. “I could ram this drumstick down your throat! You think you can just lie to people and get them to do what you want and that’s all right? I’ll kill you for this, Elfish!”
Casaubon, May, Shonen, Aisha and Gail clustered round the small figure of Elfish and screamed at her. The power of the positive transformation that had been wrought on them all was as nothing compared to the fury they displayed as their dreams crashed around their feet before flying with jeers and mockery to lie dormant, wasted and never to be fulfilled, somewhere on the unreachable surface of the moon.
In the face of this assault Elfish crumbled. She turned to face her brother.
“Help me,” she said.
Unfortunately, her brother was no longer there. Aran, unable to withstand such violent emotions, had deserted her. He was nowhere to be seen.
At this betrayal by her brother Elfish’s spirit collapsed completely and she hung her head and started to cry. While her accusers stood around still screaming at her and the audience listened in with enjoyment, she cried and cried in a public humiliation the like of which had rarely been seen or even imagined by anyone present.
As it seemed that there was now to be no support act playi
ng, the woman behind the mixing desk placed a tape in her machine and Sonic Youth’s “Bad Moon Rising” thundered through the speakers.
With their fury still intact but their words for expressing it spent, Shonen, Aisha, Casaubon, May and Gail walked a little distance away then stood together in a knot, still casting evil glances at Elfish. Other onlookers also began to move away from her. They did not wish to find themselves too close to someone so widely condemned and now reduced to the universally dreaded phenomenon of crying in public.
Over in a corner Mo and his band laughed and laughed, and made raucous comments about what Mo might demand from Elfish, should she ever stop crying for long enough to grant it.
sixty-seven
ELFISH WAS LOST. She struggled to halt her tears. There was now nothing for her to do except finish Aran’s whisky and go home. When Mo appeared in front of her and congratulated her on her performance she was incapable of even making a reply. When he told her how happy he was to call his band Queen Mab she remained mute. Even the sight of Amnesia, gloating, could not make her react.
Someone touched her shoulder from behind and spoke in her ear.
“What time are you playing, Elfish?”
Who could be stupid enough to ask such a question? Turning round, Elfish was not surprised to find that it was Cary and Lilac.
She blinked, trying to clear the tears and grime from her eyes, and wiped a long trail of mucus away from her nose with her sleeve.
“What time are you going on, Elfish? We want to hear you play.”
Elfish shook her head and told them she was not playing. She no longer had a band to play with, she no longer had the desire to play and even if she did no one would want to hear her.
“But you have to play,” said Cary. “That’s why we came.”
“And John Mackie said to be sure and encourage you. Thanks for getting us the job with him.”
Having just suffered the worst experience of her life, Elfish was in no mood to indulge such foolishness. She was irritated beyond belief by their ridiculous good humour and snapped at them, telling them to go away and leave her alone. This had no effect.
“We want to hear you,” they said.
“That’s why we came.”
“Will you leave me alone?” demanded Elfish. “I can’t stand the way you keep being friendly to me all the time. Haven’t you noticed how much I detest you?”
It was no use. Cary and Lilac possessed an unbreakable force-field of benevolent optimism. They laughed off Elfish’s aggression, assuming she did not really mean it.
“So are you going to play soon?”
“Aaahhh!” screamed Elfish, tormented again, and felt a desperate desire to stop these people from liking her.
“My sunglasses,” she gasped, in desperation. “You know how I paid for them?”
“How?”
“I stole your money. I dug it up from your garden and stole it.”
Cary and Lilac’s eyes widened.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
“You couldn’t.”
Elfish stared at them.
A tear trickled down Lilac’s cheek. This treacherous action was too much even for him. Cary sniffed. It was almost impossible for her to believe that Elfish could have done such a thing. Despite all of Elfish’s abuse, she had actually thought they were friends.
Wordless and in tears they turned and left.
Well, right, thought Elfish, and felt slightly better. I finally managed to annoy Cary and Lilac.
Belly’s “Low Red Moon” sounded loud in the room and smoke hung thick around the tables. Small fingers clutched at Elfish’s jacket.
“It’s all right, Elfish,” said Cary. “We don’t mind.”
“I suppose you needed the money,” said Lilac. “And after all, you got us the job.”
“I didn’t get you the job!”
“Well, we got it because we were friends of yours.”
They smiled at her.
“So when are you going to play?”
Elfish was truly astonished. She stared at their eager young faces and grubby white dreadlocks and marvelled at them. And in a moment of revelation she saw quite clearly that Cary and Lilac had a dream that everything was fine and everyone liked them and no matter how ludicrous this dream was they were not going to be dissuaded from it. They had apparently made up their minds to believe it and that was that.
She was abruptly ashamed that she had been dissuaded from her own dream. After all, what did she, Elfish, care what people thought? Not caring what people thought was one of Elfish’s strongest points. Looking around the bar she saw her detractors in every corner and she was furious. She was furious with them and furious with herself. Her mind cleared quite suddenly and her spirit revived. She straightened up, took a deep breath, finished Aran’s whisky, dropped the bottle so it smashed on the floor and spat in the direction of Mo.
“I think I’ll go and play right now.”
Using her boots and elbows Elfish burrowed her way violently to the stage. She leapt on to it with the power and grace of a seasoned stage diver. She picked up her guitar, turned up the volume till it shrieked with feedback then shouted through the microphone for the sound woman to turn it up further.
Dissatisfied with her fuzzbox she stamped on it and kicked it viciously till it spluttered into overdrive, thus gaining the attention of the crowd. She then began to declaim her speech, punctuating each line with a horribly distorted chord so that the audience shifted around in fear and discomfort. She placed her fingers randomly on the fretboard, creating dreadful clashing disharmonies and each one of these she pulled further into chaos with the tremolo arm on her guitar. These dreadful chords shrieked and whirled around the room, feeding back on each other till the noise was truly dreadful, a fantastical and grotesque cacophony that could never have been imagined and could never be repeated. Elfish roared her Queen Mab speech over the top of this brutal sonic attack, delivering Shakespeare in a uniquely effective and violent manner.
The audience, protesting at first, were soon beaten into submission. They huddled close to their loved ones for protection and gazed in wonder. As the speech came to an end Elfish mouthed a few lines of foul abuse at them all and plunged into her favourite song, “Here Comes the Moon.” Halfway through it she abandoned singing and, still playing her guitar with one hand, began to climb the speaker stack at the side of the stage. It lurched and swayed as she made the ascent and the audience began to cheer.
“Queen Mab, the deliverer of dreams,” cried Elfish. High above the concrete floor, guitar in hand, she leapt out into space in a stage dive that was both utterly spectacular and completely suicidal.
sixty-eight
ELFISH HUNG IN the air. She was weighed down and seriously encumbered by her guitar. The strap and lead, already tangling round her neck and legs, would prevent her from adopting any sort of sensible landing position. A disastrous headfirst collision with the grey concrete floor was only seconds away.
While she hung in the air a variety of thoughts raced through the minds of those present, ranging from a mild desire on the part of Mo that Elfish should not actually kill herself to a terrible fear on the part of Aran that she might.
Aran was well aware that he had deserted Elfish when she needed him. Although he would later claim that he had merely visited the cigarette machine after suffering an overpowering urge to have one last try for card number twenty, he knew that really his nerve had failed him. As Elfish flew to her doom he felt bitter regret. He loved his sister and he had to acknowledge that without her he would still be sitting depressed in his gloomy living room. Heedless of his own safety he rushed forward to catch her.
Elfish’s ex-collaborators, still standing in an angry circle, had similar feelings.
Oh dear, thought Shonen, as Elfish hung at the apex of her leap. Elfish has lied to me and deceived me. But where would I be if she had not? Stuck in a cycle of vomiting and hating myself. Now I have
filled in all my sponsorship applications and my theatre group is back together. This would never have happened without Elfish. Shonen rushed forward to catch her.
Oh, no, thought Aisha, as Elfish began her descent. Elfish is going to kill herself. And Elfish has misled me cruelly about Mory coming back but there again where would I be if she had not? I was sitting in my flat, too scared to even visit the shops or even get out of bed, and now I have painted a backdrop and come to the gig and enjoyed myself and things do not seem too bad, really. Not wishing that Elfish should kill herself, Aisha rushed forward to catch her.
Hell! thought May. That idiot Elfish is going to break her stupid neck and despite the fact that she deceived me about getting me a place to live I enjoy playing guitar with her. I have never had so much fun as during this last week of rehearsing. So May also rushed forward to catch her.
Gail, a person who had suffered a great deal at Elfish’s hands, was nonetheless consumed with guilt at the sight of Elfish plummeting towards disaster. After all, it was undoubtedly true that Gail and her friends would have given up entirely on the magazine had it not been for Elfish. Lies or not, it had spurred them on to action. Now they were all doing layouts and writing articles and the whole thing was almost ready to roll off the presses. Gail rushed forward to rescue Elfish.
Casaubon, cruelly disappointed in love, still hated Elfish but he did not wish to be left behind. Additionally, he had an image of himself as a large, strong, male drummer. He felt that he really should not let a small woman fall to her death in front of his eyes. When Elfish was nearing the floor, he hurled himself into action.
Seeing all this the figure of Queen Mab, resplendent on the backdrop, smiled to herself, and was satisfied. Or so Elfish thought later anyway, from the brief glimpse she had of her as she hurtled head over heels towards the ground.
The rescuers were determined in spirit but uncoordinated in action. During the headlong rush May tripped over Aran who sprawled under Aisha. Gail, Shonen and Casaubon crashed into them and all six lay in a painful struggling heap in front of the stage.
Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving Page 16