by Terry Tyler
Seeing him again had got to her a bit. Things had been so good between them, once upon a time.
Dave Bentley and Alison Swan were together for two years. They met when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two. Frantically in love though they were, Alison always knew she had the upper hand - or presumed she had. She'd thought Dave would go to the ends of the earth for her, but as it turned out he wouldn't even go a few miles down the M1.
He wanted to be a rock star, she saw her future as a singer-songwriter, and she knew the best way of both of them realising their dream was to move to London. She assumed that Dave would go with her; he assumed that she wouldn't go without him. They were both wrong. Dave refused to go to London because he didn't want to leave his mum. His father had abandoned her only a year before, to live with another woman. His older brother had bailed out to live in Scotland in 1995, and Dave said he couldn't desert her, as well. Alison understood; Yvonne Bentley had been like a mother to her, and she didn't want to see her lose her entire family all in one go, any more than Dave did.
She understood, but it was still an impossible situation.
Alison loved Dave and Dave adored Alison; he pleaded with her not to go, declared she would break his heart, but she had to. She was fed up with doing gigs in the local pubs; yes, she was getting some local recognition, but it wasn't getting her anywhere. She needed to be where it was all happening, where she could discover for herself the prestigious venues, with whom she needed to schmooze to get the right connections. A regular spot at The Bandstand and sending out her tapes and CDs to record companies was achieving precisely zilch. She was sure the tapes and CDs were never even played.
They tried the long distance relationship thing for a while, but it didn't work, as these things rarely do when the people involved are so young; Alison put a stop to it before it took another few months to peter out more painfully. So Dave stayed in Fennington and nursed his broken heart, while Alison became Ariel, because she wanted people to remember her, and the name 'Alison Swan' was instantly forgettable. She got the idea from 'The Tempest', which she'd studied for GCSE at school; looking it up, she remembered that Ariel was actually a fella, but that didn't matter; Ariel didn't do 'girly', anyway.
Home was a crumby flat in Stockwell with a nurse who'd advertised for someone to share. Ariel did shop work in the day and bar work in the evening, in pubs that specialised in live music, so she could get to know the right people, she hoped. Then her friend Melodie decided to join her. They rented a flat together, in Camberwell, and started to have fun.
Melodie wanted to be a singer, too. She had the looks, she said.
The pair went to gigs at The Forum, at Camden Underworld, Brixton Academy, the Jazz Cafe. They hung out at The Intrepid Fox, got in with all the musos, and became part of the scene. They were popular; two wildly attractive, fun girls, one blonde, one dark. When they weren't working or partying, Ariel was writing songs, using her hard earned money to get flyers printed to advertise her guest slots in the music pubs. Just Ariel and her guitar, her treasured Tanglewood TMFE 9 that her dad had bought her for her eighteenth birthday.
That was what Ariel was doing. Meanwhile, Melodie was using her non-musically orientated talents to get a married record producer into her bed. Married he certainly was, but Ariel was less than convinced about the 'record producer' bit. He claimed, in time honoured tradition, that he "longed for him and Melodie to be together properly", "wished he could introduce her to all his family and friends" and "no longer slept with his wife". His wife got pregnant at about the same time that Melodie started seriously pushing him to get her a recording contract, and he disappeared without trace. Upset and humiliated, Melodie returned to the warm bosom of her family in Fennington St Mary, leaving Ariel high and dry and with no-one to pay the other half of the rent.
Luck was on her side, though; just a week later, she met and fell utterly and completely in love with a bass guitarist called Frankie. Frankie moved in with her within a fortnight and, blissfully happy together, they decided to take time out to go and see the world. Once these new plans were made, Ariel's career aims took a back seat. She stopped chasing after gigs, just playing the odd one here and there. When she and Frankie were not working their two jobs each, they stayed at home, cosy, in love, saving every penny they could. After a year, with twenty thousand pounds saved up, they were ready to go.
As she walked along in the rain, Ariel thought about Frankie and the good times they'd had together. The happiest of her life. It made her feel sad, and she wondered where he was, who he was with. If she would ever be that happy, ever again.
Her phone bleeped. A text. Melodie.
Wot time ya finish hun fancy a drink lol.
Ariel made a 'pffft' noise, and put the phone back in her pocket. She didn't really feel like seeing her friend right now. Somewhere along the line Melodie had changed; or maybe she'd always been the same, and it was she, Ariel, who'd changed, broadened her outlook.
She'd never been the sharpest tool in the box, Melodie, but the illiterate nature of her text message annoyed Ariel more than usual. The woman was twenty-seven; why did she have to text like a fourteen year old?
Ariel had imagined Melodie's ambition to be a singer would end with the affair with the alleged record producer, but apparently this was not the case. Well, not quite.
Melodie didn't just want to be a singer, now; she wanted to be a celebrity.
She was unashamed about this. She didn't want to go down the 'glamour' modelling route, though, and she didn't want to try to marry (or have an illicit affair with) a footballer. Every pretty girl in the country was aiming for that, she said (really? Ariel had thought). No, Melodie Waters was determined to become a reality TV star. Reality TV stars were the household names of the present and maybe the success stories of the future, weren't they?
She'd already auditioned and failed to be accepted for Big Brother and Britain's Next Top Model. Well, she said, she was tall, slim and pretty enough to be a model, and she'd actually got down to the last fifty for the latter. Maybe she was too old. She put her lack of success with the producers of Big Brother down to the fact that she wasn't prepared to have sex on live TV, even if it was under the bed covers, and that she was too intelligent; the sex kittens in The House were always pretty dumb, weren't they?
She wasn't going to get married in order to go on Wife Swap. She couldn't cook, so Come Dine With Me was out of the question, and she was certainly not prepared to gain seven stone just to get on The Biggest Loser. Thus, singing was her only option.
It was her attitude towards this that really annoyed Ariel.
Melodie thought they were the same. Melodie, who couldn't read music, couldn't play an instrument, couldn't write lyrics (unless they included the words 'lol' and 'hun', Ariel presumed), and had no feel for harmony or melody, which was a joke in itself. She had a nice enough voice, and had taken singing lessons to improve her presentation, but that was all. Then she had the cheek to talk to Ariel about music, as if she knew what she was talking about, as if they were both in it together.
"I just know we've got what it takes to make it big," she'd said, the other day, "you and me, babe - all over MTV and VH1, you can just see it, can't you? I tell you, I've decided to try out for X Factor every year until I get on it. It's all about not giving up, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, partly," Ariel said. "But it's no good flogging a dead horse. You've got to be good at what you do, as well. I mean, you have to stand out from the crowd."
Melodie struck a pose and pouted. "Oh, I stand out from the crowd, all right! Anyway, it doesn't matter if you're not that great a singer these days, does it? They just do all those twiddly things to make you sound good. It's all about image, these days."
Much of the time, Ariel didn't feel she had much in common with her old friend at all, anymore.
Listening to Melodie made her wonder if she'd come across that daft and shallow, too, when she was younger. If she had, the travelling had knocked it out of her.
Six months in South America. Buenos Aires, Colombia (her favourite place ever), Ecuador, Peru. Staying in the grimmest of hostels, the poorest of towns, not just following the tourist trails. Meeting people in the most basic of communities, getting to know other travellers, from all over the world.
Sydney, Bali, Cambodia, Vietnam. Hot and dusty, eating octopus and lizard and anything else the locals ate. After a while, not wanting to be anywhere near the backpackers bars with all the soon-to-be-students on their gap years, getting pissed out of their brains and buying dodgy Es with Daddy's money. Not wearing high heels or make-up for a whole year. Cutting her hair off because it was too much of a hassle to deal with it long; finding she no longer thought about her image, how she appeared to others.
Losing Frankie's love along the way when he fell for an Australian girl called Sadie. Going to India in a group that included Frankie and Sadie and trying not to let show how badly she was hurting, because she didn't want to waste the experience of travelling. Leaving them to it, becoming enraptured with the culture of India. Waking up one morning, two months later, to find that it didn't hurt quite so much anymore; going back to London with Frankie and Sadie, and being terribly grown up about the whole thing. She said goodbye to them and moved in with a couple of guys she knew from The Intrepid Fox days. Time to get back to what was important.
She found she wrote differently, now; the music came more easily, inspired as it was by all she had seen and heard, but the lyrics were harder. She had so much to say that sometimes she felt as if it was all bursting out of her head, as if she had too many feelings, emotions too deep to be expressed in words; the emotion came out in the music itself, she felt.
She took a job in a travel agent by day, and hated every moment of it. All those people who were more interested in the size of the hotel swimming pool than seeing the actual country; every day when she got home and tore off the travel firm's horrible navy suit and floral blouse she wondered what the hell she was doing and became even more determined to make a success of her music. She did gigs wherever she could, and started to get a small following - so small she actually knew all their names - and a few positive write-ups in papers that no-one ever read. She sent more CDs off to record companies, but heard nothing back from anyone. There was little encouragement from her flatmates; she'd thought it would be a great experience, living with two other musicians; she had imagined they'd be supportive, bouncing ideas around, all three of them inspiring each other. She soon realised, though, that Mick and Gav liked to talk about music rather than actually making it. Any creativity they owned was dulled by the amount of blow and beer they got through, the latter cancelling out the possible inspirational effects of the former.
She signed up for guitar lessons to hone her skills, and started an affair with her tutor. On the day her landlord gave her, Mick and Gav two months' notice because he wanted to sell the flat, the guitar tutor asked her to move in with him.
Earlier that day she been writing a song about men who say naff things during sex - based on him. No, he wasn't going to really take her there, baby, and she wasn't in love with him. She wasn't going to set up home with a man she didn't love just because she had nowhere to live. And she wasn't scared of being alone.
So, what next?
Another shabby, rented flat with people she wouldn't normally choose to talk to for more than half an hour, let alone live with? She was twenty-eight years old. She lived from month to month, hand to mouth. She hated her job, her love life was a big heap of nothing, her social circle had not seemed so appealing since she came back from travelling - how she longed to go away again! More than that, of course, she still wanted to find some sort of recognition as an artiste, but that didn't seem likely to happen while she was fighting her way through the underground every day, and living in situations that depressed the hell out of her.
She slept on the sofa of another friend, Emily, for a while, which was better than the boys' flat simply because it was less dope and drink befuddled, but still a world away from where she wanted to be.
She decided to go home.
She would take a step back, re-group, and see where life took her.
Maybe London was too big for her, right now. Maybe she needed to gain a small, local following, live somewhere comfortable and peaceful where she could write her songs. Spend a bit of time with her dad. Borrow his car and drive out into the quiet, bleak, flat countryside of the fens, and think.
Bleak and flat. That was how Ariel Swan felt, that evening.
***
Ritchie had set up the MySpace page the day after the first gig.
Thor, on MySpace Music!
The only problem was, there wasn't any music on it.
"I dunno, it could be our gimmick," suggested Boz. "A music page with no music. I reckon it's pretty cool."
"What?" said Dave, frowning at him.
"Joking, man, joking." Boz slapped him on the back. "Fear not, guys, Boz will sort it. I know this stoner called Kelvin - a right geek but a canny lad - who lives with his mam and dad and has a studio in the spare room. Uses all those programs like Cubase; we can pay him a visit. Shit hot at mastering, too, he is."
Dave and Ritchie looked at each other and grinned. This was brilliant - Boz had turned out to be a real 'find'.
"That's fabulous," said Dave, "I thought we were going to have to start forking out for recording studios." It was so weird how everything kept falling into place; surely it must be a sign. And then there was the return of Ariel -
"Nah, not these days, man," said Boz. "Most of the bands on MySpace do it like this. We'll have to chuck him something for his trouble, but he just likes doing it."
"Our Pete says putting your music up like this is the way forward," Ritchie said, "because any A&R men and scouts who like us, we can just refer them to the MySpace page and they can see the whole, er, package, like, all the gigs and photos and songs, all in one place."
"Aye," said Boz. "That's the idea."
"We need to get a load of fans as well, though, don't we," said Shane. "I'll get me sister to spread the word and ask all her mates to be our friends, so we look well popular. Hey, this is good, isn't it? Much better than when you just had to rely on gigs."
"Yeah," said Ritchie, "but we need photos, too. I'll get our Pete onto that, he's got this geezer who does 'em for his poxy marketing consultancy website." He looked round at them all. "I might even pay for them, seeing as I'm the only one of us who earns decent money!"
Our Pete was happy to help, and three days later the Thor MySpace page featured photos of the band and its individual members.
"Get your mates to take photos at your gigs and post them on their pages - and tag you in them; that way they'll appear on your page, too," suggested Pete, in his self-imposed role as Thor's marketing advisor. "That sort of advertising works in a subliminal way; their friends will look at the photos, too, and next time they see a gig advertised, they'll think, oh yeah, that's Thor, I've seen them on Joe Bloggs' MySpace, I'll go along."
With a few clicks, he chose the right profile photo for their page. "Now, you can start building a fan base while you create the brand; build the buzz even before you put the music on the page."
Dave's head was in a whirl. Create the brand? Build the buzz? Subliminal advertising? This was all galloping ahead in a way that he loved, but it scared him, too. Was rock and roll all just marketing these days?
He'd only written four songs.
They'd only played one gig.
But it was a start, wasn't it?
He kept thinking about Ariel that week, too, wanting to go round and see her but at the same time reluctant to do so; what if she just wanted to be friends, to catch up - and what about Janice? He knew Janice still loved him, and until a few weeks ago he'd thought he still loved her. But now he wasn't so sure. Was it the idea of having a family, being with his son again, that he loved? He feared he was moving away from Janice, just slightly; it wasn't a conscious dec
ision but he was pretty sure she was working up to saying, okay, we've talked about it; when do you want to come home? But if he moved back in, that would be that. He needed to make sure it was the right thing to do before he made that commitment.
What he didn't admit to himself, at least, not in so many words, was that if he was officially back with Janice he would have to forget all about Ariel.
Dave's guilty conscience and the week's wages bought Janice a second hand laptop that Friday, so she could follow Thor on MySpace, too.
He took it round to her that very afternoon.
"Wow!" said Janice, when he gave it to her. "Dave, this is wonderful! It'll be great for Harley when he's a bit older, too."
"Well, I thought you might like to make yourself a MySpace profile," he said. "Then you can keep up with the band and put comments on our page about how great we are, and all that."
"Oh, I see, there's an ulterior motive in this show of generosity, is there?" Janice said, but she was smiling; she looked amused rather than annoyed. "I can go on Facebook, too - Carolyn says everyone's starting to use that now, not MySpace."
"Yeah, but MySpace is still where all the cool people are," said Dave. He laughed, then. "Oh, for fuck's sake, I don't know about all that crap, that's just what Shane reckons! But Ritchie and Pete say you have to be on there, these days. All the bands and singers are, apparently."
"I see," said Janice. She sat down at the laptop and opened it up. "I'll have to find out how to get on the internet, then. And how to use this thing." She got up again. "D'you want a coffee?"
Dave followed her out into the kitchen. "Where's Mr Davidson, then?"
"Oh, Mum's taken him out for tea," Janice said. She sounded distracted; he found the local paper lying on the kitchen table and glanced through it while she put the kettle on and busied herself getting mugs, coffee and sugar out of the cupboards. She fiddled around in the fridge for milk, then stopped and looked out of the window. "So, have you seen Alison Swan?"
