She was on her knees, stuffing her belongings into her bag, her shoulders shaking.
‘You lost them because you got so lashed, love. I’m sure they’ll turn up.’
Mahmoud said suddenly: ‘I can help.’
3.00am
Adam and Stella stood holding hands outside her new apartment. She had taken off her sandals in the middle of Duke Street because her feet hurt and they were now dangling from her fingers. The french doors she’d left ajar were fifty feet above their heads. A horizontal metal post, once used to winch goods up to the top floor of the warehouse, thrust itself forward over the balcony. Technically, anyone who could scale the building could climb out along the bar, drop down and enter through the windows.
‘This place, I know,’ said Mahmoud. ‘I sleep here maybe two, three times.’
‘I thought all these developments were scally proof.’
Mahmoud looked down modestly. There was little he hadn’t experienced in the way of hiding on alarmed premises, boarding boats unseen or clinging to the under-carriage of a train at speed. He had even managed to thwart a pair of sniffer dogs by concealing himself in a container full of lilies. ‘In my country,’ he said. ‘I climb mountains. Very high.’
Stella was impatient. Her first evening alone was now, she felt, at its final ebb. She really couldn’t cope with any more of it; she really needed to lie down. She longed for sleep and looked forward to her dreams because Lucy was in them. Actually, of course, as the vicar had said at the funeral, when they had launched hundreds of red balloons heavenwards, Lucy was probably in Paradise.
‘Go for it, Mahmoud,’ she said.
Adam had dropped Stella’s hand and was examining the sheer face of the building, the smooth unbroken pointing. ‘Are you crazy? He’ll kill himself.’
‘Is no problem,’ said Mahmoud. He took off his dirty trainers and rolled back his sleeves. Stella saw for the first time the marks etched on his arms: the scars of survival.
‘For fuck’s sake, Stella! Tell him to stop.’
‘I am Spiderman,’ Mahmoud called from the top ridge of a ground floor window. He was spread-eagled against the brickwork – more like a fly than a spider – a scrappy dark shape with elongated limbs.
‘But Adam, I need to get in. Or I’ll collapse. And look how well he’s doing, just like the old Milk Tray advert.’
‘There’s nothing for him to grip, no toe-holds. He’ll fall.’
‘Dear God,’ she said, in a small weary voice, ‘I am so tired’.
He grabbed her arm to stop her sinking on to the pavement. ‘Look, just forget this escapade. I’m only up the road, in Faulkner Square.’ He was still renting. He didn’t want to buy. Why commit yourself? He had high ceilings, long windows and a spare room into which he banished clutter. He took a deep breath. ‘You’d better come back with me for what’s left of the night and we’ll sort something out in the morning. I’m sure the keys will turn up.’
Her expression was unreadable, but he heard her whisper: ‘Like old times.’
‘New times,’ he said firmly. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled at Mahmoud. ‘Come on arselicker. Get down from there. We’re all going to my place.’
The fly quivered on its perch. Then, with a mighty leap, it landed joyfully back on the ground.
Rules of the Game
Adrian Reynolds
So you wake up and it wasn’t a dream - you did talk and her number’s on the flap of the Rizla packet that’s poking out of your jeans. The woman in The Peacock you were calling Daryl Henna in your pillow talk before you even spoke. She’s working in the day, Skidoo or something, that gallery on the way to Selectadisc, which means you’ve got hours to research that casual call since you want this one to go right.
You’ve got to go somewhere, and it can’t just be a drink or a meal after the way you joked about dating last night, so you look through City Lights and strike out a couple of bands because they’ve been in the charts already and you know you’ll be five years older than most of the audience which makes you almost as old as the group and that just won’t do. Which means the only suitable gig - barring Air at Rock City, and the tickets are sold out - is Christ On A Mountainbike, who are admittedly great live but unfortunately look better in cycling shorts than you do. Besides, Mandy might still be selling t-shirts for them and that’s a confrontation you could do without this special evening. If she’s lived in Nottingham more than six months she’ll have seen them once or twice anyway, which also means she’s unlikely to be quite so impressed by your being on smoking terms with Dermot the bass player. Over the page then, which is where the fringe events are listed and adding sophistication to your credentials can only be a good thing where Ms. Henna is concerned (but remember - her name’s Anne). Alternative Circus is as pricy as it is passé, but elsewhere and cheaper - and nearer your place if we’re going to be practical about these things - is a post-Lenny Henry comedian who impressed at least one of the music weeklies with his offhand surrealism and corduroy shirt. Tony Dapper it is then, tickets £7.50 (£6.00 concs), 8.30 meaning 9.30 and a Grolsch in the bar beforehand. But what to wear? The leather’s good, and though she’s already seen it, a consistent image could suggest a more general self-assurance, but then there’s the new hooded top, the G-Force one…these things matter when impressions are formed in a breakbeat barrage of soundbites and samples, and identity - as a caption in the last i-D over a distorted photocopy of a French philosopher paraphrased - is a matter of imposing your own signal on everyone else’s noise.
Zoe gave the end of the joint her trademark flourish and calmly and deliberately lit it. Anne felt herself tense but was careful to maintain her composure - Zoe had taken to skinning up after what was euphemistically termed the lunch-time rush a few days after Anne had started working at the gallery, and it was now part of what might in others be a routine but in Zoe’s case was most definitely a ritual. Anne fidgeted and couldn’t help looking to the door, catching Zoe’s oblique gaze as her eyes returned to the game of Sonic the Hedgehog that one of the exhibits was playing with itself in the corner. As Zoe passed the joint, Sonic wagged a solemn blue finger and - passionless, pointless, pixel-precise - executed a perfect triple somersault.
‘Matt!’
Matt looked up. He’d been circling the square for half-an-hour and was glad of the interruption.
‘Haven’t seen you in ages, man - what’ve you been doing?’ Clearly it was someone who knew him, but he couldn’t work out who. The hair and leggings pointed to one of the skate crew he’d hung round with a couple of months last year, but without a board it was hard to be sure. People change.
‘Oh, you know, a few projects ticking away, but nothing bigtime.’
‘Still working yeah?’
‘Just a couple of days now. Gives me time…’ Matt trailed the sentence off with a sweep of his hand.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘How about you?’
‘Still doing the course. Final year now.’
‘What about afterwards?’
‘Dunno. Figured I’d hang round here a while, see what comes up. You know how it is.’
Matt nodded sympathetically.
‘Anyway - got to shoot. Nice seeing you. Give my love to Cass, yeah?’
Matt sat by the fountain and watched the pigeons. Who the fuck was Cass?
It might be good, thought Anne. She’d been a bit drunk last night but Matt didn’t seem like most of the jellyheads she’d met lately. A poseur maybe, but that’s to be expected in The Peacock and they usually loosen up after a pint and if she remembered not to say anything too pertinent. She’d given him her number and from the way he’d looked at her she guessed he’d be calling tonight. Just as long as he doesn’t suggest seeing Christ On A Mountainbike. Ever since her little fling with the bassist, Declan, she hadn’t dared to see a local band for fear they might be supporting.
Matt paused as he turned to leave the vegetable aisle. Some reduced peppers had taken his attention, but if h
e got those he wouldn’t be able to afford any cheese and that meant no sandwiches for work. Unless...he performed a rapid calculation. Ditch the yoghurt and the biscuits, or forget the oranges and go for the cheaper of the apples. But then would he still be able to get the peanut butter? His mind raced and he found himself static, with no consciousness of having moved there, in front of a display of tinned peaches, heart skipping at a striplight flicker. He wanted a cigarette.
‘Excuse me, I wonder if you could spare a minute to talk. There’s a lot of terrible things happening around the world and I’d like to share my feelings about what we all can do.’ He was young and he was German and he looked hot in his suit. A badge identified him as Elder Karsten.
Before Anne could say anything, he continued. ‘I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Have you heard of this?’ His teeth gleamed white.
‘The Mormons?’
‘Yes - that is another of our names, but properly we are known as the Latter-day Saints. Most probably you know of us because of our association with polygamy, but that is something that was only practised by a small minority of our members and is no longer a part of our beliefs.’ He spoke with weary fluency.
‘Pity.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I said it’s a pity. Shouldn’t people be allowed to marry if they love each other?’
‘Yes, of course. But only one man and one woman. Any more and is…not possible.’
‘Why? I can love lots of men.’
‘Yes, but there is a difference between loving someone and having a relationship with them.’
‘Only if you’re a hypocrite.’
Elder Karsten looked confused.
Matt watched some of the news – Jordan announcing her engagement to Peter Andre and a reported mass grave in Bosnia, Serbs killed by Croats or Muslims killed by Serbs or something like that - but then Vaughan came round with the Banana Splits video he’d been on about the other night so they watched that for a bit and argued about whether the fourth Split was called Fleegle or Famine, Drooper or Death and then it was time to meet Anne.
He sounded younger on the phone somehow, but funny and unfussed, and only a couple of decibels of anxiety entered his voice when he’d enquired what she was doing that evening. She’d no plans, she said, and left it open to him. The comedian had been on Graham Norton last week, she remembered, wondering why reviewers said post-Lenny Henry when they meant black. He was OK.
Matt hadn’t got beyond the label of his Grolsch when the audience were called to see the night’s first performer. They finished their drinks and drifted in halfway through what was presumably a satirical song rendered unhearable by fuzz guitar and audience indifference. ‘Just what the world needs; a grunge comedian,’ Anne grunted. Matt found himself laughing. They sat down.
The song dissolved into feedback and isolated applause. Undeterred, the guitarist launched into his next number, revealing that ‘This one’s about…’ before unleashing another E chord. It must have been about something pretty involved because it was two verses, three choruses and nearly a Bristol Suspension of bridge longer than the first one. It was too noisy to talk, or they didn’t want to broach the intimacy of breathing into each other’s ears, so they shrugged helplessly and looked at the stage. After a minute they glanced back to one another.
‘Isn’t that…?’ enquired Matt.
‘…the guy who plays bass in Christ On A Mountainbike?’ said Anne. ‘I think so.’
After two more songs he left the stage. They didn’t catch his name. Over another Grolsch in the interval they agreed that they didn’t like him, and they didn’t much like Christ On A Mountainbike either. But at least, said Anne, wrinkling her nose, they’re not totally right-on, like Le Tigre, who some guy the other week had wanted her to see. Matt nodded vigorously, adding that he too was sick of the new wave of activist bands which, he improvised, was partly why he was only working three days a week at Selectadisc now. He hinted at discounts if there was anything she particularly wanted at the moment. She smiled and said she’d think about it.
Tony Dapper ambled to the microphone with a shy wave. He began by confusing the venue with the previous night’s show in Leicester, and continued to confuse the two gigs at plausibly random intervals in his more obviously scripted material. He’d used the same device with Graham Norton, Anne recalled, pretending that the programme was a South Bank Show devoted to Noel Edmonds. Funnier was a routine about Jimi Hendrix being woken braindead but conscious from a drug coma by S Club 7’s manager and offered a job as Lenny Kravitz, which Matt too seemed to like judging by the look on his face, though he hadn’t really laughed since Anne’s remark earlier. Other jokes concerned the likely whereabouts of Osama bin Laden, ideal methods of birth control, possible ramifications of the Jordan-Andre union, and one contained a knowing reference to ecstasy that made some of the audience whoop like they were on Oprah. For a comedian, Tony Dapper was pretty funny.
‘I kept thinking he was going to break into a routine about missing teaspoons and how they all turn up in his sock drawer. It was just…’ Matt sucked on his cigarette. ‘It was all so safe. Tame, like he knows he’s got a good chance of doing his own TV show if he doesn’t rock the boat. Get him a catchphrase and a t-shirt and he could be packing the students in for the next two or three years.’
‘And only sheep get fleeced, right? You sound jealous.’ Anne couldn’t work out why Matt was so seemingly distraught at the thought of Tony Dapper’s future success. More likely, she speculated, it had less to do with the comedian than the fact that they were sitting in a pub which was going to close in fifteen minutes without either of them having said anything of consequence for - she wasn’t sure how long, but they’d met just before eight-thirty and it was now nearly eleven. Maybe consequence wasn’t Matt’s style - he liked to keep things on a surface level and his surface just went deeper than most. Probably she wouldn’t find out unless and until she slept with him, but that wasn’t on the agenda yet in any case.
‘Jealous no. Pissed off yes - the guy’s got a platform and he could be using it, instead of just getting up a rung of the ladder that’ll take him to playing golf with Brucie and Branagh.’
‘What do you mean, a ‘platform’? Because he’s black he should be a role model, the Spike Lee of the comedy circuit?’ It sounded sharper than Anne had intended, but Matt seemed as intrigued as he was embarrassed.
‘That’s not what I meant. It’s just seeing how the system works. This audience is here now because the guy’s been on telly and in the Sunday supplements and the reviewers have said he’s good and he’s on his way up the food chain growing bigger and more bloated all the time.’ Matt grew animated, voice louder and body alert. ‘Swelling as he takes in more people until he’s a showbiz monster with his own show and tabloids telling you twenty things you never wanted to know about him.’
‘Which makes us plankton I suppose.’ And me sardonic, thought Anne.
‘Something like that. Most TV is aimed at one-celled organisms.’ Matt seemed confident now, secure enough in his ability to entertain Anne without monitoring her reactions. He pantomimed a syrupy continuity announcer. ‘This programme contains the recommended daily allowance of feel-good sentiment and uncritical acceptance and is guaranteed not to provoke, question, or otherwise disturb your allotted role as passive consumer.’
Anne was amused but unwilling to let Matt get away with his posture, if posture it was. ‘And there I was thinking you were just another Viz-reading Banana Splits fan.’
‘She’s rumbled me.’ The experience seemed to be a novelty that Matt enjoyed, and the moment relaxed into a pause they were both comfortable with. ‘Listen -’
Anne raised her watch before he could say anything. ‘I’ll have to go now. The last bus. Give me a call at the weekend, yeah?’
Matt paused for a moment. ‘Yeah.’
So you wake up and you feel like checking the curtains to see if the birds are singing and you
wonder why you’re in a good mood and you remember last night and grin a big shit-eating grin at yourself in the mirror for being so corny but loving it all the same. And even though reality’s intruded by the time you’ve organised some toast it’s still good to start the day on a high. You’ll meet again at the weekend by the sound of things and probably get drunk and confess that you do in fact like Le Tigre it’s just the fans can get a bit earnest you know and you’ll both nod and laugh the way people do when they really understand each other and maybe you’ll end up in bed which means you’d better do some tidying up before Friday night. You hope you didn’t seem too predictable because some of the conversation you came out with was pretty familiar but they’re probably thinking the same thing about themselves but you got on and that’s the important thing and anyway it’s always like that the first time you meet someone. It went pretty well in the end then. Or maybe it was the drink. Either way, it could have been a lot worse. You could have been wasting another evening with the bassist out of Christ On A Mountainbike.
Pig, Who?
Penny Feeny
I shouldn’t of told him about the baby. I should of kept my lip buttoned. We had this English teacher at school, used big words all the time, used to shake her head at me and say: You always embellish so, Vicki. But it’s not like I can’t tell the difference between the truth and a lie. It’s just sometimes a story needs helping along, a little push to make it run smoother, and that’s what I’m good at. But every now and again, I s’pose, I push a bit too hard and it starts to get out of control. That’s how it was with Jonathan really.
Out of the blue he come up to me when I’m sitting on the wall, banging my heels against the bricks in a fury and bawling. I don’t recognise him at first. People look different in daylight. He takes a handkerchief out of the top pocket of his suit jacket and offers it to me. I always thought them hankies sticking up like flags was just for show, same as the tie he’s got round his neck. You can’t imagine people like him ever needing to blow their noses. Even with his mates he’s a bit of a stuffed shirt, Jonathan. He don’t laugh much at jokes and when they’re nudging him to have another, he looks solemn and puts his hand over the top of the glass.
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