by Liam Livings
I thought for a short while. “Not now I’ve thought about it.”
“Well, then.”
“Give us a drag on that, would you?”
She let me have a drag on her cigarette. I inhaled deeply and let her simple words of wisdom settle into my mind. Mum’s common sense yet again won through.
She reached into her handbag. “That reminds me—nearly forgot why I’m here.” She handed me a white, A4 envelope with a window addressed to me at Mum and Dad’s place.
“What is it?” I felt for the thickness and stared at the address window. It was definitely for me.
“Thick, isn’t it? Postage paid, so…”
“So…what?”
“Dunno. How about you stop fannying about and open the bloody thing? I’ve not got all night. Gotta get home and get your dad’s tea on, as much as I’d love to sit here gassing and smoking with you. You never did tell me about the boxes—what’s going on?”
I told her about the rent and the landlord and Paul’s new career in club promotions as I opened the letter.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Didn’t want to worry you. We needed money.”
“I see.” She sipped her tea. “Come on, what’s it about? I’m on the edge of me seat here.”
It said the solicitors had tried to contact me on a number of occasions unsuccessfully, but they enclosed a photocopy of the signed will relating to which I was a beneficiary. I stopped reading and looked up at Mum. “It’s Auntie Luella.”
“What’s she gone and done now? You were going to write her a letter, weren’t you?”
“She’s gone and died.”
“She hasn’t, has she?” She shook her head, then hugged me, and after a polite amount of time pulled away and said, “When did you last see her? Hear from her? Get in touch?”
Guilt stabbed through me. I hadn’t visited her for the last two or three years, since I’d turned twenty. Somehow, for some reason, going to America to visit a maiden aunt had seemed a bit unseemly, a bit odd, a little bit creepy somehow. Which was stupid. I’d gone every summer since I was old enough to fly unaccompanied. “We still wrote to each other.” And I had replied to her last letter a while ago.
“Love, I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. It’s not like you killed her, did you?” She paused, then stared at me, a dead serious expression on her face. “Did you?”
“No. How could I?”
“So what’s it say? I’ve your Dad’s tea to get on.”
“You said.” The solicitor’s letter explained they’d highlighted the relevant part of the copy of the will, and that I’d need to contact their office to see the original and begin proceedings. Begin proceedings? What was the man on about? I scanned the highlighted sections, which said I’d been left the sum of fifty thousand pounds. There was something about the grant of probate and having to meet the solicitor in person.
I handed Mum the letter, asked her to read it, see if I’d understood it right.
“Fifty fucking grand! Bloody hell! What about her poor brother, what does it—oh, same for him too. That’s all right. But you, at your age, that’s a bit dangerous, isn’t it? Who knows what you could do with it? Life changing, is that.” She paused, put the letter on her lap. “Wonder what she died of. Does it say?”
“You’re holding the letters and that.”
“So I am. I’m a bit dazed. All at sixes and sevens. Fifty grand. I’ll call your dad, tell him. No, I’ll see what she died of first. Seems a bit undignified, doesn’t it?” She scanned through the papers, shuffling them in her hands. “Nothing here about it. I suppose you’ll have to see the solicitor, find out if they know anything. Will we have to come, as we’re benefactors too?”
“Who knows?” Poor Auntie Luella, with her big hats, and her Manhattan apartment next to Central Park, in the building where John Lennon and Yoko Ono had lived and outside which Lennon had been shot, where tourists always crowded for their photos to be taken in what I’d always thought, even as a ten-year-old boy, to be pretty poor taste.
Mum said, “There’s something else. Another envelope. Here.” She handed it to me. “It’s like Christmas, this, isn’t it?”
To my darling Tom,
If you’re reading this, it means I am no more, I’m afraid. But don’t fret for me; it’s simply the same as before I was born, and I didn’t mind that part one bit.
Always straight and to the point as usual. It continued…
I have given you and your parents an equal share and you must spent it unwisely—such enormous fun—I want you to enjoy the money. You are to do whatsoever you wish with it, ignore what I would have approved or disapproved of, just promise me you’ll enjoy it.
As you know, you were my favourite nephew, and the son I never had myself. Damn suitors springing from everywhere when I was a young girl, and then where were they when I needed them? No point dwelling on that now.
After I moved to New York when you were a little boy, I missed you so much, but it was the right thing to do. I even, I’m afraid to say, missed you more than my own brother! I think he knew this really. And I’ve been so fortunate in your parents allowing you to fly out to see me so regularly, even if this somewhat tailed off in later years. I say this, not to make you feel guilty or any such nonsense, but probably in later years I was, as a septuagenarian aunt with parts of me seizing up, or dropping off, or needing ointments and medication to keep in serviceable order, somewhat less fun to spend time with than my younger self.
As I watched you grow up, each year you visited me, as you turned from a little boy to a teenager, to a surly teenager, into a young man, it all gave me such pleasure; more pleasure, I think, than if I’d been your real mother. I had all the holidays and the fun bits without having to worry about whether you got up for school and all such day-to-day issues.
So you see, my darling, wonderful young man, Tom, this is to say thank you, both to you for giving me that, and to your parents for letting me be such a part of it, your growing up.
Lots of love Luella XXXOOO
“What’s she on about?” Mum asked.
The vision of the letter blurred before me. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand. “I’ll really miss her. I’m such a shit nephew, not seeing her for the last three years. What a shit thing to do, eh? And look how I’m thanked.” I shook my head.
“What about all those years you did see her, every summer holiday, sometimes the whole six weeks you were out there. And, let me tell you, me and your dad, we weren’t half grateful too. It wasn’t like we didn’t see enough of you. She was like your one-man finishing school in New York. You’d always come home with a new word or a new sort of food you wanted to have. It was great.” She paused, scanning through the letter. “Bless her heart.”
“I should’ve gone to see her this summer. Or the one before.”
Mum rubbed my shoulders. “You was busy. You was working and DJing and everything. You couldn’t have gone for six weeks, and it’s a long flight for a week.”
“Excuses, excuses. She knew, you know.”
“What?”
“The clubbing, the DJing, everything. The whole scene.”
“Everything, everything?”
“When I came back to hers that night after getting right on it with that Sam man, her accountant, I was bollocksed. And do you know what she did, when she greeted me in her dressing gown as I walks through the door, eyes like bin lids and still wanting to dance a bit more?”
“Dropped one herself? She was a game old bird, wasn’t she?”
“She wasn’t a cartoon character. No, she asked if I’d had a good time, did I want to chill out or did I still want to dance, and had I got on well with Sam, and how did I feel?”
“Just like that?
“Just. Like. That. She said she’d been trying to persuade Sam to let her have a try of the X herself, but he’d dissuaded her. With a heart as old as hers, he didn’t want to have a dead woman on his conscience. But i
t didn’t stop her badgering him every time he came round to do her accounts. She made me describe exactly what it felt like, why I did it, what the comedown was like. And once I’d described that, she just said she didn’t think she could cope with that, and that nowadays a hangover almost did for her, so she didn’t think she’d be able to deal with any chemical enhancements on top of her daily tablets.”
“What are you gonna spend it on?” Mum asked.
“Not sure, but I’ve got a few ideas. I’ll talk to Paul first. What about you and Dad?”
“Same as you, I suppose. It’s gonna be fun working out how to spend it, though.” She put the letter down on the table.
CHAPTER 11
Six months later—Ibiza
WE WERE LYING on our towels on the beach a few hundred yards from our apartment. Playa D’en Bossa had the longest beach on the island, something the locals never tired of reminding us.
The sun warmed my skin. The gentle lapping of the sea, yards away, had just lulled me back to sleep, but now I was reading, a thick paperback written especially for the beach. I found reading—the silence it demands, the silence it created in my mind while doing it—was exactly what my body needed after the days and nights stuffed with music, lights and movement.
Last night hadn’t been any different. We’d played to five thousand at an underground club a few streets back from the beach, Swifeys. The club prided itself on being all about the music, none of the foam-party, water-filled dance floors, inflatables and lightshow gimmicks of the other clubs. No, Swifeys was all about the music, and so were we until we’d finally crashed in the early hours of the morning.
Paul was swimming in the sea, his head visible from where I was sitting. He turned to wave at me.
I pushed my white Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses down my nose and waved back at him. I could get used to this. I had got used to this.
A few moments later, Paul was lying next to me, on his towel, dripping water everywhere. He leant across and kissed me.
“Good swim?” I asked.
“Wicked.”
“What do you fancy doing today?”
“We’ve got a busy week.” He talked through our four appearances over the next seven days, some during the day, others at night, in the three main clubs in Playa D’en Bossa, each catering for a slightly different dance-and-party-hungry crowd.
I squeezed his hand. “Best stay here, then.”
“Best we did.” He lay on his back, his hands behind his head. “Hard life, isn’t it?”
“Bless Auntie Luella.” I returned to my paperback.
“And Slinky Simon—don’t forget him. This time, we can say it really was what Luella would have wanted. When someone dies, people justify anything by saying that, when in reality the dead person wouldn’t have wanted it at all.” He shrugged. “That was a bit deep for—” he searched for his watch “—what is the time?”
“Four. Where’s your watch gone?”
“Must have gone missing last night. It’ll turn up, I’m sure.” He reached into the beach bag I’d packed. “Get us a water, would you?”
“I’m not made of money, thanks very much.” I was a bit sensitive to the whole inheritance and money-being-no-object thing; despite Luella’s insistence, I didn’t want to spunk it up the wall in a few months.
“Lost my wallet.”
“What else did you lose last night?”
“You called the police?”
“Wasn’t much in it. Anything really. Besides, I wasn’t pickpocketed. I just…” He was still in the bag pretending to search. “Sort of lost it. I think that’s the best way to describe last night, don’t you?”
To be fair to Paul, it had been one of those nights where everything seemed a bit slanted and was so far from the day time, when the usual rules applied, that you have to remind yourself what’s happening at regular intervals, lest you become completely untethered and float away into the ether world of the clubbing and after-clubbing people. People who were weekenders but now weekended all week long. Like causalities of war, these pill-heads would wander from party to party, from club to club, falling asleep wherever they stopped, until the next party and batch of pills were acquired. Last night, we’d met some of these week-long weekenders, and although fun at first, I had eventually wanted to return to the real world.
Turning my mind back to Paul and his missing wallet, I said, “Do you reckon one of the randoms nicked them?”
“Nicked what?” His eyes were closed now, his arms above his head. His armpits were still as sexily irresistible as always.
“Watch and wallet. Come on, lover, pay attention. I do worry about you sometimes.”
“Right. Yeah, they’re well gone. No worries. Wicked night, wasn’t it?”
“But do you reckon they nicked them?” I persevered.
“Who?” He turned so he lay on his front. “Gotta get an all-over tan.”
“The randoms. Like I said.”
“No way. They were as sound as a pound. Safe as fuck, they were.”
“Fucked, they were definitely fucked. When had they last slept, do you think?”
“Didn’t ask ’em. Do my back, would you? Put a bit of that factor five on, would you? And do one of those massages you’re so good at.”
He knew how to flatter me, and I let him. Because so often, after doing the massage, we would run inside together and tear each other’s clothes off.
After finishing his back, I wiped the spare sun cream on my chest and asked him to do me, then, as I lay on my front while he massaged it into my back with his expertly soft hands, said, “Are your parents actually coming over?” They’d been threatening to visit us since we’d arrived five months ago, but I had yet to see the evidence of it being planned.
“Father said he could combine it with property searches—reckons the Ibiza housing market is set to do an upturn, or make the most of a downturn, anyway. And Mother said she would come so she knew what to tell her friends her son was up to next time they were children-boasting at a dinner party.”
“She’s all heart, isn’t she?”
“That’s heart. I think she’s controlled by a big IBM computer in Winchester. She mentioned she wanted a mobile phone rather than always having to rely on her Mercedes car phone.”
“What does she need a mobile phone for?”
“The Women’s Guild’s ex-chair has one. Anyway, I had to stop myself asking didn’t she have a phone built into her hardware?”
I laughed. “Do you reckon we’ll ever get them all to meet?”
“Meeting of the clans.”
“That’s the one.” I’d often envisaged it: Marilyn and Roger regarding my parents like they were artefacts in a museum; Mum and Dad not having anything to say to them; me and Paul running between them, feeding them conversational morsels to keep the party from dying.
“Don’t think I could be arsed with the hassle. Do you know what I mean?”
“What if they just turn up, invite themselves?”
“They’ll check into some five-star hotel. We’ll have dinner, get them drunk and leave them for a club. It’ll be fine.” He paused. “It’ll be fine cos it’ll never happen, I’m telling you.”
I enjoyed the feeling of his hands rubbing the cream into my back. When he finished, I opened my book and, as the sun warmed me, I re-joined the fictional bubble of the characters I’d been hanging out with before Paul had returned from the sea.
***
Since we’d settled on the beautiful island of Ibiza—with some help from Slinky Simon’s tryout club slot and Paul’s party-planning skills and ability to take seemingly anyone out for dinner and end up their best friend at the end of the night—we’d become well known as the British DJ couple. The more we played, the more sets we did, the more clubs we filled, the more we were asked to appear at other clubs all over the island.
As Mum always said, ‘things come of other things’, and our time on Ibiza certainly was full of things. DJ Tommy T and Paulie Pau
l on the club flyers was starting to pull in crowds in numbers we could only have dreamed of before coming to Ibiza. Sometimes we headlined a club night and got top billing, right at the top of the flyer and the posters, our names side by side with all the other names below us.
It was, as Paul often said, wicked.
Tonight, we were playing Space, a legendary club in Ibiza, with four rooms of different sizes playing various types of music: house, trance, Euro trance, bouncy house and lots of different genres in between. Space had some open-air areas, where clubbers could dance under the stars until the sun came up again. They also had daytime parties for those clubbers who refused to go to sleep from the night before, or the more sensible people who wanted to dance all day and sleep all night. Tonight, Paul and I were in one of the smaller rooms, capacity only five thousand!
Our room had a ceiling of white lights like enormous jellyfish, with plastic tentacles trailing from their edges. The DJ booth was raised along the shortest wall, offering an uninterrupted view of the entire dance floor, allowing us to judge the mood of the music and the vibes of the clubbers when picking the next song.
We came on halfway through the night, after the crowd were well warmed up, hands waving in the air, and we managed to keep them floating at just about that level for our entire ninety-minute set. Paul and I had each dropped, just a half, so we stayed in control of what we were doing. It gave me just the right floaty feeling, sympathising with how the clubbers felt, allowing us to choose songs that flowed from one to the next.
Towards the end, we were playing one of our favourite songs: ‘For An Angel’ by Paul Van Dyke. We’d built the crowd to a crescendo, holding them at the high point of the song, the bit which would have been a chorus if trance music had choruses of any sort. The crowd shouted, jumped in the air and screamed, so we played it again, and again, finally moving off the podium after playing it three times.
