Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving (17 page)

She found them sitting in the large downstairs room in a pall of gloom. This room was half white and half filthy grey, a sudden enthusiasm for painting having expired with the magazine. Unfriendly eyes regarded her as she entered.

Pitching her voice at an aggressive whine she started in on them immediately, mocking them for their defeatism.

“Still sitting around depressed because you couldn't raise any money or find a distributor? What a pathetic bunch you are. I've never known anyone give up so easily. If you really believed in your damned newspaper you'd work something out, you'd get the money somewhere and you'd take it round the shops on your bicycles or sell it on the streets or something. You just can't be bothered to make the effort. Like everyone else around here you would prefer just to give up. And you have the nerve to level criticisms against me for being antisocial? Who could be sociable towards a bunch of down-and-out fakes and failures like yourselves?”

Her flatmates, suffering this criticism from Elfish about something she had never shown the slightest interest in, were shocked and perplexed. Elfish ignored their protests and carried on.

“And when an opportunity to help yourselves does arise, what happens? You ignore it. When the one person who could be of use to you is on the verge of great things, what do you do? You abuse her. And why? Because you'd rather sit around being depressed, that's why. You enjoy it. It makes you feel good. You get pleasure from your misery. You're shallow. You're sick. You blame the President of
America and McDonald's hamburgers for your troubles in Brixton and then you don't have to do anything else except sit around whingeing about negative images on television. You've never tried for anything in your lives, you never will, you'll never have any effect on the world because you don't really want to.”

Elfish spat on the floor, and stormed up to her room.

Well, that ought to do it, she mused cheerfully.

Pigeons scampered around the roof. It always surprised Elfish the amount of noise that pigeons' feet could make through a roof. She put on a Babes in Toyland album at immense volume to drown them out.

Human footsteps sounded on the stairs. Chevon's head appeared round Elfish's door.

“What opportunity for success?” she said, wincing at the noise and the humid, incense-laden air.

CARY AND LILAC were keen lovers but they did not have sex as often as observers of their public affection might have imagined, because much of the time they were too stoned. They could make love while powerfully under the influence of grass or ecstasy, their usual drugs, and even while tripping, but often the drugs made them more prone to lying on their mattress in a fond embrace without actually doing anything much.

On occasion, however, after taking ecstasy, they would find themselves projected into a strange and pleasantly elongated world wherein they had the energy and inclination to make love even after dancing for twelve hours, which they would do at raves. Then Lilac would slide his small body down over Cary's pale white thighs and lick her cunt for a long, long time. Cary would lie happily like this for an age before sliding herself over on top of Lilac and taking his cock in her mouth, and suck him in a very gentle manner. In this way they would spend the remaining hours of their wakefulness, passing into a kind of tantric and ecstatic state of pleasurable feeling before eventually drifting off to sleep, feeling that they were very much in love and everything in the world was good.

“Soon we'll have enough money for our holiday,” whispered Cary, and this made the world seem especially fine.

Unfortunately for Cary she was mistaken in this, being unaware that their savings had dramatically shrunk due to Elfish's urgent need for a pair of sunglasses.

Sunglasses were a problem for Elfish. The pain that the sun caused her made it important for her to have some and the upcoming gig made it vital that they looked good. When she walked on stage with Queen Mab she did not intend to be wearing a bad pair of shades. Unfortunately, to her surprise, she had found that good sunglasses were expensive. There were many pairs on sale in Brixton, hanging in racks outside the bargain shops alongside baseball caps and unbranded washing-up liquid, but none of them were at all satisfactory. The only pair good enough were sitting in the window of a chemist and they were outrageously expensive.

Where could she get some money from immediately? Pacing her room in frustration, a picture suddenly formed in her mind of Cary and Lilac burying something in their garden. It struck her forcefully that it could well be money because any money they had would have to be hidden from Dennis's overwhelming desire to drink Special Brew all the time.

It was the work of only a few seconds to climb the garden wall, scrabble around in the dirt and remove the tin, thereby dashing her young neighbours' hopes of a quiet week away from the city.

Afterwards, posing with some enthusiasm in front of a shop window, Elfish was pleased. They were excellent sunglasses. And she was satisfied to have robbed Cary and Lilac, who continually tormented her, and had had the effrontery to involve themselves in a painting of Queen Mab.

ARAN HAD A strong temptation to program Elfish into his video game but was undecided as to whether she was about to bring off a spectacular triumph or plunge into disaster. He decided against it anyway. Elfish would not be pleased to find her own brother suspecting that she was not going to fulfil her dream. Aran was aware that Elfish, now with no real friends, had come to depend on him for support.

He stared at his computer terminal. It was becoming a little tedious simply sweeping the raft towards the edge of the world all the time. Aran programed in a new level where it disappeared down the middle of a whirlpool, landing in a gloomy underground world full of trolls and serpents.

Aran's game was actually even more tedious than he imagined because he had no real idea of how to make a game work well. Anyone other than himself would have seen it for the ridiculous thing that it was. Still, an author who has abandoned writing as a stupid endeavour has to do something.

Once underground the adventurers had the opportunity to find their way back to safety by following a silken thread laid out like the one that led Theseus safely from the maze after slaying the Minotaur. Following
this, however, led immediately to a place where the path branched off into sixty tunnels, only one of which led to the way out.

Aran chuckled as his mythical and historical characters failed to find the way out.

“Looks like it's back to the ocean for you,” he said, as they were forced by dragons down a deep well which brought them once more on to their raft and right up to the final waterfall of doom.

He was not entirely happy with this level. What if someone managed to pick the right way out? It was sixty to one but that was not a chance Aran was willing to take. He reworked it a little, placing a vast army of trolls at the end of the one correct tunnel to chase off anyone who made it that far.

Ben Jonson, Cleopatra, Pericles, Botticelli, Mick Ronson, Bomber Harris and Red Sonja, battered by their underground struggle with the trolls, sat grim-faced as the raft teetered on the brink of the void. Among them was another dark and mysterious figure who seemed to have appeared from nowhere; no one knew who she was and she did not speak.

IT WAS TIME for Elfish to rehearse. Aran walked down to the studio with his sister, helping her with her equipment. He noticed that Elfish's normally dour features were set into something that could almost have been a smile.

“Things are going well, I take it?”

“Line twenty-seven. And that's not all.”

She pointed to her sunglasses. Aran admired them, telling her she was bound to look cool on stage.

Elfish had further reason to be satisfied. She informed Aran that in one magnificent stroke she had turned round the situation in her house. Instead of four harridans from hell waiting to pounce on her and toss her out into the street, Elfish now had four enthusiastic helpers willing her on to victory. The house, only yesterday a repository of gloom and despair, was, according to Elfish, now a hive of youthful and positive activity. It had taken her some effort to do this as her natural inclination was to distress her flatmates rather than cheer them up, but Elfish had deemed it necessary for her purposes.

The tale she told Aran was impressive indeed. It showed again the vast range of Elfish's imaginative powers in matters pertaining to
her own advancement. In answer to Chevon's enquiry about what opportunity for success presented itself, Elfish had pointed out that even someone as dense and insular as Chevon had no doubt noticed that Elfish was getting her band together again. Were Chevon only to look at the matter properly she would see that this was good news for the magazine because the fund-raising possibilities of Elfish's band were limitless.

“If you and your friends were to get behind me in matters of promoting gigs and suchlike we would already have a solid base for making money. Not a great deal round here, I admit, but you probably only need a few hundred pounds to get the magazine off to a good start. We could easily raise that. But that would only be the beginning. Now this next thing is strictly confidential . . .”

Elfish then related, quite untruthfully but entirely convincingly, that for the past three months she had been secretly sleeping with Adam, Brixton's only rock star. His band was a phenomenon in that they were based in Brixton and were successful. They were so successful that they toured the world and released records that sold in millions.

This was true about the band, and Adam's walls were lined with gold records, but he never socialised in Brixton and neither Elfish nor anyone she knew had ever actually met him.

“And he has promised me that we can support him in some gigs. As he has a regular girlfriend who would not be particularly pleased to learn that I have been shagging him, I think I can count on his promise. Adam in fact is a very right-on musician. He is not above helping good causes and there is every reason to suppose that were I to ask him at an appropriate moment, for instance when I am giving him a blow-job, if his band would do a benefit for the magazine, he might well agree.”

“And did this work?” asked Aran.

“It did indeed. The prospect of money won them over entirely. They are as venal as everybody else. They are now working for me on the definite understanding that prosperous benefit gigs will follow soon. What's more, Gail is going to borrow a bass guitar and play for me on Saturday so my band is complete. She is a lousy guitarist and will probably be even worse on bass but at least she'll be there. My guitar will cover up most of what she plays anyway. Also they will bring along their friends to the gig which is good because they have lots of friends and I get a split of the door.

“I had further arguments in reserve, such as pointing out that as a woman I should be supported in my struggle with Mo, especially as I may end up in a position in which he can demand anything he desires, but by that time I had won my case anyway. All in all a complete triumph, I'm sure you'll agree.”

Elfish frowned slightly though, at the very thought of losing to Mo.

Aran carried her guitar into the rehearsal rooms under the arches.

“You haven't actually ever met Adam the rock star, have you?”

Elfish shook her head.

“If your band got going, would you play benefits for the magazine?”

“You must be joking,” said Elfish. “Fuck benefits. I wouldn't sully the name of Queen Mab. This is rock and roll.”

AFTER LEAVING ELFISH to her rehearsal Aran was immediately depressed. He ignored the beggar who hung around outside the studio, optimistic after receiving money from May, and wandered off aimlessly.

He wondered who he could go to and tell about his unhappiness. No one sprang to mind. Each of his few friends was a long way past their tolerance limit as regards Aran's continual depression.

His day of discomfort at the heat and aimless unhappiness did contain one small success when he found card number three in his second packet of cigarettes.

“Right!” said Aran. “Number three. No doubt sent to Brixton due to a packaging error at the factory.”

Now he had only one card left to collect. The five pounds was almost his.

After this, however, he had nothing at all to do. Nothing interested him. A cluster of unwanted people who sat regularly on a bench on a wide corner asked him for cigarettes but Aran ignored them. His generosity, what there was of it, had disappeared with his girlfriend.

When a few hours of aimless wandering had brought him
nowhere he found himself back at the rehearsal studio. The band might be taking a break.

In this he was lucky. As he arrived Elfish was forcing coins into the coffee machine and hitting it to hurry the process along.

“What are you doing back here?” she asked, and Aran confessed that he had nothing better to do.

“Then why not go and keep Shonen happy?”

“What? Why?”

“Because I've been worried about her ever since I heard she slept with Mo. Any woman Mo has slept with becomes a prime suspect in my eyes, and needs careful watching.”

“What if she doesn't want to be carefully watched?”

“She will. Shonen loves attention. All neurotics love attention. As long as you are prepared to listen to their problems, they're happy. Just politely ignore it when she leaves the room to vomit. Stay with her as long as you can, I don't want Mo getting back to her. I don't care what she learns after the gig is over but until then she has to stay on my side. So go and keep her happy.” Elfish glanced at Aran's miserable face. “Well, perhaps that's asking too much. But keep her occupied. Be sympathetic about her bad childhood. Help her with her sponsorship forms. Talk about Shakespeare. Tell her stories. Fuck her.”