by Grace Dent
And they’re off!
Leeza and Abigail first, cartwheeling down the center of the stage and then back again, followed by Derren and Zane walking on their hands, then launching into perfect backflips. Finally Panama steals center stage, pirouetting a hundred times perfectly, smiling like an android from ear to ear.
“Hello, Blackwell Live,” she shrills. “Thanks for coming to see me! This is your favorite and mine, it’s ‘Running to Your Love’!!!”
“Woo-hoo!” screams the crowd.
“Oooh, baby!” mimes Panama.
“I’m floating in the sky!
Like a big love pie!
You make me feel real high!
Oh, my Oh, my
Tra la la la!”
Leeza and Abigail sashay past her as she sings. Derren and Zane are doing some bizarre tap dance, whirling their arms around as Panama reaches the chorus.
“Oooh, baby, baby—I’m running to your love!
Wanna give my heart a big shove!
You fit me like a glove.
Cos I’m running to your love!”
“I had no idea Panama was such an intellectual,” remarks Fleur sarcastically. “That chorus is really quite profound.”
Spike is giggling and cheering, clearly having the time of his life. “Are these, like, your mates?” he asks.
“No,” we both reply, in stereo.
And I’m about to explain to Spike Saunders the entire sorry tale, about how Catwalk menaced us into headlining Blackwell Live, and all about their nasty threats, and about Panama ensnaring Jimi and life being totally unfair . . . but then, as Panama begins her second chorus, something very very wonderful occurs.
“I’m ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-” stutters Panama, waving her hands frantically at Vinny, the roadie.
Oh my God! Catwalk’s backing tape seems to have jammed!
“Love lo-lo-lo-lo-looooove,” stutters the tape, before correcting itself and running normally once more.
Perhaps the crowd hasn’t noticed? Catwalk’s dance routine has certainly been thrown well out of sync, but they seem to catch themselves up.
“Did you hear that?” One girl chuckles. “Panama’s voice was totally out of time with her lips.”
“It’s just a tape! They’re miming!” I hear people whispering as Catwalk try to shimmy on regardlessly.
“Wanna gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi-gi!” stutters Panama’s voice. The tape is stuck again. This time for much longer! Panama’s face is beginning to turn violet.
“Gi-gi-gi-gi-gi!” it stutters as Vinny bangs the side of the sound deck, trying to rectify the problem. Brilliantly, this just stops the tape altogether with a loud screech. Then it winds backward!
“Evolllllll ruoy ot gninnur!” garbles the tape before grinding again to a halt.
“You’re miming!” screams one lad. “It’s just a backing tape!”
“Sing us a proper song!” shouts another.
Vinny is frantically pushing buttons and fiddling with wires. The tape bursts to life again.
“Running to your love!!” sings Panama’s taped voice.
“Keep going! Just keep dancing. The show must go on,” Panama snarls at the rest of Catwalk. But by this point Abigail has legged it off stage and Derren is frozen to the spot with his head in his hands; Zane attempts to save the show with one nifty double front somersault, but nerves get the better of him and he lands on his bum with a mighty crash.
Ther-dunch! is the sound of his bum colliding with the floor.
And then the backing tape stops again, this time for good. Not even lovely Mr. Ball, our science teacher, who helpfully runs forward with a Swiss penknife, offering to work some boffinlike magic on the fuses, can help Catwalk now. Vinny is just sitting with his head in his hands, trying to suppress fits of giggles.
I’d like to say here that sidesplitting laughter and jeers immediately rip through the field, but instead there’s a deathly stunned silence. Complete dumbfoundment. Everybody is simply staring forward at the emptying stage, mouths ajar. A crisp bag blows by. In the distance a church bell tolls. Still, no one speaks. Eventually, after what seemed like an age, a singular clap is heard at the very back of the field.
“Thank you very much,” shouts Panama, sadly realizing it was the woman from the burger van slapping the last dregs of tomato ketchup from one of her bottles. On this note Panama makes a bid for escape too, running past what is most definitely Claudette Cassiera, smiling serenely on the side of the stage. It’s almost, just almost, as if Claude has had something to do with this whole catastrophe.
“I find it very difficult to imagine you’d be involved in anything like this, Claudette Cassiera,” I can imagine McGraw’s voice saying. “Very difficult indeed.”
Throughout the festival site, people are now openly hooting and jeering.
“Encore!” kids are yelling. “More!”
“Put the tape back on! Mime us another song!” chants one particularly rowdy section of the crowd.
“Oh, that’s just too bad,” Spike says sympathetically. “The poor things. They started so well too,” he adds. “I’ve died on stage before. It’s no fun at all.”
Okay, yeah, we could correct Spike and tell him why this is the most wonderful end to Blackwell Live ever, but instead Fleur spies a golden opportunity.
“Well, er, you could smooth things over by singing a few songs, couldn’t you?” Fleur suggests.
Spike looks at her, then raises an eyebrow. He’s clearly thinking about it. “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt, would it?” Spike says, removing his sunglasses, exposing his beautiful, instantly recognizable face to the crowd. A few girls standing right beside us gasp, nudging each other frantically.
“Spike Saunders. Spike Saunders! Oh my God!” they shout, informing everyone in earshot. The whisper beings to spread rapidly, growing louder and louder until everyone within fifty meters is pointing and shouting, “Spike! It’s Spike Saunders! Look, over there!”
One girl simply faints, right there on the spot before us.
“I mean, seeing as I’m here, eh?” says Spike. “If nobody minds, that is.”
From where I’m standing, I can see Uncle Charlie clutching his brow and shouting hoarsely into a walkie-talkie at the side of the stage. His face is practically burgundy, the poor bloke.
As a non-negotiable riot erupts around us, Spike runs as fast as he can through the crowd, mounting Blackwell Live’s main stage and grabbing a nearby acoustic guitar.
“Hello, Blackwell,” he begins. “I’m Spike Saunders.”
“Wooooo-hoo!” screams the bewildered crowd en masse.
“Er, thanks for letting me hijack the festival,” Spike says, strumming the guitar a little. “You know, I don’t like to turn up uninvited to places, but hey, you seemed like a friendly bunch.”
“AAAAARGH!!” screeches a thousand girls.
“Sing us a song!” screams one young lass.
“Er, okay,” says Spike. I think he might actually be a bit nervous. He looks at the crowd in a puzzled way. “You know, it’s been a long time since it’s been just me and a guitar, I’m kind of not sure what to play for you,” he teases.
“ ‘Merry Go Round’!” screams some rather noisy fans near the front barrier. “We want ‘Merry Go Round’!”
“Ah, ‘Merry Go Round,’ no problem at all!” Spike shouts, and the audience erupts as he plays the very familiar opening bars.
“Ooh, hang on,” Spike says just before he begins the first verse. “This one is for my mate Ronnie. She likes this one, she does.”
And as I turned around to grab Fleur’s hand and yell, “That’s me! He means me!” I saw something very wonderful indeed.
Making her way through the crowds, brandishing a large veggie burger smothered in onions and ketchup in one hand, stepped the one and only Mrs. Magda Ripperton.
My mum had shown up!
And at that very second, I was so happy, I thought my head was going to explode.
Chapte
r 12
so, in conclusion
So many unforgettably fantastic things happened during Blackwell Live, it’s all the LBD have talked about for the last week, from dawn to dusk and sometimes even in our dreams.
We must be quite, quite intolerable. Thank heavens we have each other to natter with. Okay, thank heavens we have each other, full stop.
Like, there was that excellent finale, where Spike Saunders sang “Cold Heart” (an excellent track from the To Hell and Back CD) with the entire crowd joining in with the choruses.
That made me cry for some curious reason.
I don’t know why nice things make you cry sometimes, they just do.
And the police weren’t even that angry about what happened. Well, not really, considering. Once Chief Superintendent Johnson heard the LBD had collected over a thousand pounds for charity, he turned a blind eye to the riot van and police reinforcements he’d had to deploy.
Whoops. Next time we “invite an international superstar to our garden party” (his words), we’ve promised we’ll tip him off.
Thank heavens for Mrs. Guinevere, who dealt with the police with outstanding diplomacy; and later on, when she returned from informing Mr. McGraw of the goings-on, well, she wasn’t even the slightest bit ruffled. She was actually still quite jubilant.
“But did McGraw miss out on Spike Saunders?” Fleur asked.
“Oh, well, he barricaded himself into his office hours ago.” Mrs. Guinevere smiled. “I believe he’d seen quite enough once Death Knell began jumping out of coffins covered in blood. It was a lot of visual stimulation for him to take in.”
“But what’s he doing in there?” asked Claude.
“Well, to be exact, he’s listening to a recital of Barber’s Adagio for Strings on Radio 4 with the blinds firmly pulled down . . . oh, and doing the Guardian crossword.” Mrs. Guinevere chuckled. “His parting comment as I left was ‘Alas, even Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned.’ ”
“Well, at least he’s happy, then,” concluded Claude. “Well, er, sort of.”
no need to shout
By the time the dance tent kicked off and Johnny Martlew was spinning his “rare groove classics,” the floor was jumping; I was delirious with exhaustion, but determined to stay. Through the crowded dance floor, where Mrs. Guinevere and Mr. Foxton were dancing like kids and laughing like drains, I remember spying Jimi thoughtfully enjoying a drink. Apparently Panama and him had fought monumentally after Catwalk bombed on stage; then Panama stormed home expecting to be chased. But Jimi didn’t, he stayed for the disco instead.
Ha ha. Too funny.
Oh, and I do remember a lot of snogging.
Not me, of course. But there was certainly a whole lotta snoggage going down, it was tongue central. Fleur was canoodling behind the DJ booth with Killa Blow; in fact, they’ve been on two dates since then and Fleur is still not even bored with him.
It must be a true love thing going on.
Oh, and beside the bar, just before closing time, I even spotted Tara from Guttersnipe with her face stuck passionately into a large pile of black, curly hair, beneath which lurked one Benjamin Stark.
“We’re just friends, really!” Tara blushed when I tackled her en route to the ladies’ loo.
What a fibber!
Her face was covered in her own smeared red lipstick!
Of course, Aaron and Naz took their pick from the EZ Life Syndicate ladies, they’re such lads, and let’s face it, everyone else was bumping faces, so why shouldn’t they?
But the best part of all was seeing my dad walking gingerly around the side of the dance floor, carrying two drinks in each hand, a lager and a Coke, accompanied by my extremely healthy-looking mum wearing loose black trousers and a cropped T-shirt. The smallest hint of belly pushing over her waistband.
Too many puddings at Nan’s house, I thought.
I’d hugged, kissed and clambered all over my poor mum when she first appeared during Spike’s set (not very cool, now that I think about it, but hell, I love my mum, so shoot me!) but I knew that there wasn’t the time to have the “big talk” with her about her disappearance. And I had plenty to say, believe me.
Of course, now that I had Mum and Dad back together in front of me—in perfect position for me to rant and rave at them, and scream about how badly treated I’d been—I completely forgot what I was furious about. It was just so absolutely lovely to see Mum and Dad together, having a laugh, that nothing else in the entire world at this precise moment seemed to matter aside from getting closer to them.
“Mum! Muuuuuuum!!!” I shouted, running over and hugging her, breathing in her familiar Mumish smell.
“Ronnie! Hello, darling! We’ve both been looking for you.” Mum looked fresh-skinned and joyous, even if she did seem pretty emotional.
“Look, I’m really sorry, Ronnie, I’ve got a whole load of things to explain—”
“It’s okay, Mum,” I began to garble, noticing Dad’s misty eyes. “You don’t have to bother explaining—”
“No, I really have to,” Mum said. “I think we’d better go outside for a second.” Mum grabbed my hand. “I need to tell you the real deal here. You know I wouldn’t have not given you an answer about coming today, or left you alone without a dead good reason, don’t you?”
“Don’t, Mum. It doesn’t matter,” I said, tears starting to drizzle down my cheeks like a big baby. “I’m just dead glad you’re back. You are back for good now, aren’t you?”
Mum nodded.
“Well, you don’t need to explain, then,” I said.
“No, Ronnie, let her tell you,” said Dad, smirking. “It’s a corker. This is the best excuse anyone has ever given you in the whole world.”
And it turned out it was.
In fact, I’ve officially decided to let Loz and Magda both off the hook now for acting like absolute maniacs for the last four weeks.
I mean, it’s not every day you find out you’re going to officially be a big sister, is it?
Me! Ha ha! A big sister? That sounds great, doesn’t it?
And now that I think about it, I suppose I’d have behaved a little insanely and needed “time to think” if I’d discovered a real actual person growing inside me too. Especially as it seems now that Dad then started being an even bigger prize durrbrain by saying weird stuff like they were “too old to have another little baby in the house.”
That was not what Mum wanted to hear at all. Apparently she was furious, so she went off to Nan’s to think about some serious life stuff.
“But what were you thinking about when you were there?” I asked her.
“Well, strangling your father, mostly,” Mum sighed.“That . . . and pickle and banana sandwiches, really,” she admitted.
“Here we go again,” Dad said, wrapping his arms preciously around my mum and her bump.
He doesn’t look very much like a man who doesn’t want another baby anymore. He actually looks highly pleased with his lot.
I mean, how much trouble are kids anyway?
All we ever do is spread joy.
My mum perched both her hands on her extended belly, like she still wasn’t quite used to the idea of the baby herself. Then she looked out at the disco-dancing throng.
“I’m really sorry for missing today, Ronnie,” she whispered.
“I was feeling wretched. But when your dad called me from here tonight and we had a really long talk about how we both felt, well, I just got straight in a taxi. I just wanted us all to be together.”
“Eh? And you can’t blame her, really, can you?” Dad chuckled. “I mean, we’re a damn fine family, aren’t we, us Rippertons?!”
We’re not bad.
So here I am, in the rehearsal room of the Fantastic Voyage, playing my new shiny bass guitar.
Okay, attempting to play.
I’ve been plugging away in front of Teach Yourself Bass Guitar in Five Days for well over five days now. All I’ve got is sore fingers, broken nails and a stiff n
eck.
It’s amazing what you can get out of your parents when they’re feeling guilty, isn’t it? I dragged my pregnant mum out shopping last week after her three-month maternity scan, and before I could mutter the words “severe psychological damage,” I had a bass guitar to make up for the last month’s fruit-loop behavior. Ha, it almost makes it worth them arguing if I get cool stuff like this. In fact, I need a guitar and drum kit now for Fleur and Claude, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on them. Joking.
Dum dum dum dum dum. Perchang. Ouch.
I am useless on this bass guitar. It’s going to end up in my bedroom as a clothes horse, I can see it now. I have no natural rhythm.
“No, don’t give up, you’re getting there. Just hold the chord more firmly, you’re holding it like a girl.”
I look up with a start to see the delightful vision of Jimi Steele dressed in baggy blue jeans and his red Quiksilver top. He’s shaved all his hair off too!
Mmmmm. I love shaved heads!
His split with Panama has done him a world of good.
“Have you joined the Marines?” I say dryly.
“No. Why?” He smirks.
“You’ve had a haircut.”
“Have I? HAVE I?” Jimi starts grabbing his head furiously. “When? Who would do such a thing without my permission? Ronnie, call the cops!”
“Very funny,” I say, trying not to smile.
“I thought so.”
I continue picking at the bass, pretending it’s the most normal thing in the world for Jimi Steele to pop over and see me during summer vacation. I am too cool.
“So, can I help you at all, or is this just a social visit?” I eventually say.
“Er, um, murrr . . . well, yeah, I actually came to bring back this . . . ,” Jimi mutters, delving into his bag. “I took it by mistake when we last practiced here.” Jimi pulls out an old bit of cloth.
“A beer towel?” I say, fixing him with one of my best bemused gazes.
“Uh-huh.”
“You came around here to give back an old beer towel?” I repeat. “Of which we have thousands?”
