Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  ‘Bloody hell. Why they always pull this shit on a Tuesday? It’s like they deliberately don’t want me involved or something.’

  ‘Dunno. Take it up with your boy. They’ve been planning this one for a while far as I know.’

  ‘And where’s Xanthe and the kid? They’ve not taken Dido down there?’

  ‘Nah. Nah, mate. Xanthe’s gone, int she. When she heard what they was planning she said she’d had enough, wasn’t going to risk getting involved in it all by proxy. I think she’s had this in mind for a while, to be honest. She popped out to the phone box, then a woman with a van came and picked the two of them up about six. Didn’t even say much of a goodbye.’

  Sammi had been aware of Gaz’s crush on Xanthe but didn’t really feel able to offer any comfort right then, so she patted him on the shoulder a couple of times and went to bed. She’d been curled up in her sleeping bag for a couple of hours, her brain spinning out with the worry of it all, her blood pulsing fast around her stomach and thighs, when a loud metallic clanging reverberated through the house. It didn’t stop, took her a while to realize it was the shutter.

  Downstairs, barefoot, with a torch, bumping into an equally confused and very stoned Gaz in the corridor, the two of them reached the entrance space, the noise making them wince. Gaz nudged her, indicated that she should be the one to speak.

  ‘Who is it?’ she yelled, over the din.

  ‘Spider. And Utti. Can’t get this thing open. Sammi, matey, you’ve got to let us in.’

  Over cups of tea, Utti and Spider managed to piece together a story. They’d broken into the McDonald’s site with the intention of occupying the space and disrupting the building work the next day, but Mark and Giancarlo had got into an argument about who could go further, both of them apparently daring the other one on to do something more. Clio had tried to stop them, pointing out that there were flats above the space, but Giancarlo, after Mark had goaded him, had set something alight. Clio had walked out at that point, leaving the rest of them unsure what to do, and the police had shown up almost immediately.

  ‘Like they was waiting for us or something,’ Spider said, and Utti nodded. ‘Si, si, this is not a coincidence, this one.’

  Utti and Spider, having been furthest back, had been able to sneak out without being seen, but they were definitely sure that Fran, Giancarlo and Mark had all been arrested, had watched from round the corner as they were put into vans.

  Sammi and Gaz just sat there, watching them, neither of them in a fit state to cope with any of this information.

  Clio showed up after eleven the next day, as Sammi was getting ready to leave for work, having managed maybe an hour of crappy sleep, worried about Mark. Smell of drink off her, make-up smudged.

  ‘What happened to you last night?’

  ‘Went to a bar. Met a nice young man. Didn’t feel like coming home.’ The smirk was lazy, done for show.

  ‘Well, looks like you got out right on time, dintcha?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Your little stunt last night. Down at the building site. They all got themselves arrested right after you left.’

  ‘What?’

  Sammi would play this expression back to herself over and over again in the coming weeks. She might not be Clio’s biggest fan, but she was pretty sure the shock was genuine. However, as Fran and Mark reminded her when they arrived back on bail the next day, Sammi had not been there.

  ‘Listen, Frances,’ Sammi heard Clio saying, as their voices reached breaking point through the wall, ‘why the fuck would I call the cops on you? On anyone? This was as much my project as yours – why would I want you to get in trouble for it?’

  ‘Because you don’t like me!’ Fran burst out. ‘You’re always finding ways to put me down. Maybe you wanted to see me punished because of my background – because you secretly hate anyone who wasn’t born all working-fucking-class salt-of-the-earth?’

  Clio’s laugh sounded contemptuous. ‘Not liking one person is not a reason to sell a group of friends out in the middle of a project you believe in. Take stock of yourself, woman. Get a fucking grip.’

  ‘I think Fran’s just maybe pointing out that it’s a bit convenient, Clio, the police showing up just after you’d left the site.’ This was Mark, seemingly all rational.

  ‘What? By that logic you should blame fucking Xanthe! She actually left the squat for good that day!’

  ‘Xanthe’s my friend!’ wailed Fran. ‘Xanthe would never do anything to hurt me!’

  ‘Come on, mateys. I don’t think Clio gonna call the pigs.’ This was Spider now. ‘Not for anything, but certainly not on her comrades. Int that right? Why don’t we all calm down here a bit, eh?’

  Sammi rolled onto her side, pulled a pillow over her head and pressed it down on her ear, tuned in to the fast, fast pace of her pulse, and kept her secret for another day.

  NEIL

  Glasgow, 23 January 2018

  ‘Tributes have been pouring in for the musician Clio Campbell, who died yesterday …’

  Tributes always poured, Neil thought.

  The First Minister, douce and sad, said that Clio had been a great talent and was a huge loss to the country.

  Shiv West, hair pulled back, no make-up, apparently on her own doorstep, said she was a great friend and a lifelong inspiration.

  Jools Holland, looking harried outside a BBC building, said that he was shaken, that she had been one of the truly great voices in folk music, and that she would be missed by everyone on his show.

  ‘The well-known concert promoter Danny Mansfield, founder of the Big Rock Festival, who was married to Ms Campbell from 1993 to 1995, sent us the following statement: “I’m devastated. I’ve lost a great friend and the world has lost a great talent.” Mr Mansfield went on to ask that the media respect his family’s need for privacy at this difficult time.’

  His secretary had emailed Neil the same thing, and they’d run it in the piece. He was surprised anyone except himself remembered the marriage. He was surprised Danny Mansfield did. He suspected the secretary had copied and pasted the statement from someone else’s death, someone else’s tribute.

  It seemed like an awful lot of coverage for someone who’d only had one hit single and a couple of critically panned albums. The benefits of living in a small country, he supposed.

  Neil flicked the telly off, picked up his phone and refreshed the newspaper website again. It was up. He copied the link and tweeted: My obituary for Clio Campbell. A great friend and an even greater singer.

  Then he searched for her name. For some reason it seemed like an awful lot of young women were talking about her and linking to videos of ‘Rise Up’ on YouTube. Nobody else had published an obituary yet, so they were ahead of the curve there at least.

  Great.

  He wondered how you would translate that word each time.

  She was a singer who I vaguely remember liking in the Nineties, and she once sang at a function I was invited to.

  I met her three times in ten years and never had that much to say to her.

  She had a lovely voice and was a massive pain in the arse.

  She was a maddening, impulsive, humourless force of nature, who changed her mind every five minutes, never stuck to plans, and would pick people up and drop them again as and when she needed them. And I fucking well loved her.

  He’d shouted that last bit, he realized. His flat was silent in response. The traffic outside the window hooted appreciatively.

  Then he was on his hands and knees, raking through the CD storage case he kept in the cupboard. There it was. The Northern Lass, signed in black marker around her face, the letters tangled in her hair.

  For Neil.

  C X

  He hadn’t used the CD player on his old stereo in a few years, was surprised it still gulped the disc obediently. Lying on the sofa as the strings led him into ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, as Clio smoked and shimmered around the room, he found he’d reached for his phone and was t
humbing. Twenty-six notifications already. He switched the fucking thing off, shut his eyes, let his ears do the breathing for a while.

  Had we never loved sae kindly,

  Had we never loved sae blindly,

  Never met – or never parted,

  We would ne’er be broken-hearted.

  It was perfectly dark when he opened his eyes, a creeping neck pain doing the work of waking for him. The only light in the room was the green LED display on the stereo. He fumbled for his phone and turned it on, almost an automatic reaction, before he’d eased himself up. His body scolded him with each twinge for two concurrent nights of bad sleep out of his bed, to no purpose. 4.18 a.m. Christ. It had been early evening when he’d gone down. The phone buzzed and twitched itself to life, messages and notifications filing in – no, pouring in.

  His obituary had been retweeted over eight hundred times.

  There was a voicemail from Craig, because of course Craig was the sort of person who would still leave a voicemail.

  ‘Neil. Mate. This Clio Campbell thing – getting more hits than anything else this week. Great stuff, great stuff. Really blowing up. Think we’re going to go for a big feature in the Saturday mag. Want you to lead on it. Can you call me asap?’

  He’d actually said ‘ass-ap’.

  Fare-thee-weel, ma first and fairest.

  Edinburgh, 2003

  They rounded the corner onto Princes Street, trudging obediently, a polite phalanx of navy-blue cagoules and expensive all-weather coats. There were not very many placards and no banners; a few people had been handed now-soggy Socialist Worker posters to wave, their slogans unrelated to the issue of the day, but mostly they just trudged. It was a very well-behaved protest, despite the best efforts of the students up ahead who kept trying to stoke a half-hearted chant into something more.

  ‘Who let the bombs out?’

  ‘BUSH! BUSH AND BLAIR!’

  They’d bark and howl into the drizzle, then shut themselves down again. At every burst of noise, Neil would check the tape recorder, even though he’d drawn the short straw in the office and come out with a clunky shoebox of a thing, at least fifteen years old, with no way of measuring the sound levels. The wheels were still turning, at least. He felt like a right eejit holding it up at the great man’s mouth as they walked along: Neil was also considerably shorter than him and his arm was getting tired; he had to try and keep his elbow slightly bent so it didn’t look like he was marching along giving a Nazi salute. He wished they could just sit down, go to a café, but his editor had wanted colour, a sense of the life of the protest, the big man’s politics in motion, he’d said. So this. Stupid, stupid. Neil was sure he’d play it back and have hardly anything usable.

  A couple of girls in their twenties, fake fur and umbrellas, glittery eye shadow, had clocked the writer – he wasn’t necessarily a household face, but they might have recognized him from the book jackets, the odd TV interview he’d done. They were nudging each other and giggling.

  ‘Be cool. Just be cool,’ the dark-haired one said. The writer turned and smiled at them, a smile that said, yes, it’s me.

  ‘Do you get that a lot?’ said Neil, nodding at their backs and trying an all-boys-together sort of grin.

  The writer shrugged. ‘It’s not the worst bit of the job, is it.’ He’d spent the whole interview at a frustrating reserve, careful not to say anything incriminating on tape, even though Neil had tried hard to reassure him that he was a huge fan, that the readership would agree with his anti-Iraq War stance because basically everyone did, now, and they’d get in loads of plugs for the new book. Advance word says it’s the great post-9/11 Scottish novel – how do you feel about that, Neil had asked, and the writer had leaned into the tape recorder and enunciated clearly.

  ‘Oh, that’s for other people to decide. I just write the things.’

  ‘George BUSH!

  You’re a WANKER!

  Fuck off with your OIL TANKER!’

  Beside them, two old ladies in tweed coats drew to a halt.

  ‘Well, I think that’s me now, Morag.’

  ‘Absolutely. No need for that. Let’s go and have a cup of tea.’

  Neil worried that he’d gone wrong somewhere. The big man was well known as an interviewer’s dream, so friendly you felt you’d always known him. Perhaps he was just as embarrassed as Neil was by the awkwardness of the set-up, the march, the tape recorder. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought the recorder, Neil thought. Maybe I should have just taken notes.

  He’d tuned out.

  ‘… and I think that’s reflected in the demographic we’re seeing here today. After an apathetic, prosperous decade, the middle classes are waking up, and standing up for issues that don’t directly affect their lives.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I know what you mean,’ said Neil, covering frantically.

  The march filed quietly down the damp slope into Princes Street Gardens for the rally at the bandstand. Neil thought about the footage he’d seen of the London protests, all that vigour and anger and youth. He remembered marching on George Square in Glasgow, screaming and spitting, one small drop in a wave of fury, consumed with the righteousness of what they were doing. Maybe the difference was the city, maybe the difference was him. He had turned thirty-eight the week before, had gone to see the Fall with some friends, drowned in a leather-jacketed sea of men his own age and older, all holding pints. He’d watched Mark E Smith writhe and swear and wondered that someone could still find the energy to feel that much.

  The writer was going to be speaking at the rally; unusually for a protest he’d been announced in advance, a press release sent out.

  ‘No, it’s not something I’d normally do,’ he said to the tape recorder, as they huddled at the back of the bandstand, glad of the roof. ‘Not anything I’ve ever done before. But we’re living in exceptional times, aren’t we? Where over a million people can march on the capital city making their wishes known and the government just ignores it? Where we wage war on countries under completely flimsy pretexts to get at their oil? If people like my books and want to listen to me, and I can use that to get more and more of them to realize what’s going on – well, it becomes a duty, doesn’t it?’

  Neil nodded eagerly, took a second to notice he was motioning to stop the tape recorder.

  ‘Listen, I think – I mean, do feel free to come backstage here with me, but you’d probably better switch the machine off. None of these people have agreed to be part of the interview, or recorded. You know?’

  Neil kept on nodding – it was something to do with his face. He takes me for a fool, this man, he thought. He thinks I’m a rank amateur, some wee freelancer who struck it lucky and is on his first big celebrity interview. It’s the tape recorder. The fucking tape recorder.

  ‘Good man. Good man.’

  Backstage, Neil tried to stay out of everyone’s way. There were a few musicians dotted about, tuning up, a socialist MSP he recognized from the telly. Fifteen years ago, he reflected, this would have been Gogsy Duke in his element, networking and charming, making everyone feel warm and enthused, part of the same project. But the Right Honourable member for Glasgow Possil toed the party line now, would not allow himself to be even tenuously associated with an event created to be critical of his boss. Gogsy had voted to invade Iraq. Neil had overheard one of the subs in the office chuckling about it when they got the list of MP votes through, about how the mighty had fallen, something like that. People always found it funny when principled men betrayed themselves. Neil had got drunk that night, by himself, in the Albannach, avoiding his colleagues’ eyes and not talking. Drinking by himself.

  And then, like a ghost, as though the thought of Gogsy had summoned her, there was Clio. A light touch on his arm, a waft of something female and flowery. Of course she was there. It made perfect sense.

  ‘Long time, stranger.’

  She was there, and she was talking like a dame from an old movie. They hugged and she held tightly on to his
neck, let him keep his arms on her waist, one, two, three.

  ‘You doing a wee turn at this, then?’

  ‘I am. All very last minute. Special guest yet to be announced, that’s me. Play the hit.’

  ‘I thought you were living in London.’

  ‘I still am. Sometimes. Been in Europe a bit. Up north some more. I go where it takes me. But today I’m here.’

  ‘Flying visit?’

  ‘Megabus back down tomorrow morning. You look well, Neil. It’s good to see you. Listen, I’m going to go and get warmed up now, but how about we get a drink or something later? Have you got any plans?’

  He did not. She retreated back into the darkness and the crowd started clapping, a few whistles, the loudest they’d been all day, as the writer took the stage. He was passionate, he was well spoken, he drew laughs and stoked outrage, expertly. He made them feel good about themselves and their involvement in this cause, fed their anger, inspired them to think of doing more, if only in that moment. And Neil could not record a single bit of it, because his tape had run out. He let himself ease closer and closer to the wings, drawing a couple of looks from the organizers, trying at least to memorize some of the lines that got the biggest responses, whispering them over to himself so he missed the next sentence, lost track of what was being said.

  The writer left the stage on the opposite side, a fanfare of stomps and cheers heralding him off, and Clio was standing beside him again, guitar strapped across her, staring straight ahead. He knew better than to disturb her right before she went on, even just to give her a thumbs-up. The MC or host or whatever you called someone at a rally was talking too close to the microphone, sound booming everywhere.

  ‘Well, wasn’t that something, folks? I think it’s a testament to how serious this issue is that we’re getting this calibre of speaker out. We’re sending a message – Mr Blair, your warmongering American friends are NOT WELCOME here!’

  More cheers.