Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving Page 6

  This did not trouble her. She knew that she would be able to learn whatever was required when the time came.

  As well as the Elvis cover version she had her own song about the moon. The chord structure ran A minor A minor A minor A minor A minor A minor A minor A minor E minor E minor E minor E minor E minor E minor E minor E minor, then back to A minor and so on. The verse ran, “We’re landing on the moon, we’re landing on the moon,” repeated as often as sounded appropriate at the time. She had decided against writing a chorus as it sounded just fine as it was. Back when she had played in her first band, long before she even met Mo, this had always been a crowd-pleaser. She played it now.

  Next Elfish retuned her guitar and practised her slide technique, plucking long mournful notes with her fingers, and singing a little blues. Elfish’s voice accompanied by the bottleneck guitar made an effective and sad combination. She would never play like this in public, however, and only Aran had ever heard her play the blues.

  She could pass away hours in this fashion. It was dark when she placed her guitar carefully against the wall. Summer was approaching and the encroaching heat was already troubling her but the sun was safely gone when she glanced through her window. She frowned, displeased to see Cary and Lilac bending over something in their backyard. Annoyed, she hunted her room for some money to buy a drink, going through the lining of every garment she possessed in case a coin had somehow lodged there unnoticed. This was futile and she knew it because she had been through all these linings only three days ago. After the linings had revealed nothing she got round to lifting up the edges of her rug in case anything had rolled there.

  Cary and Lilac were also concerned with money. It is amazing how an enterprise, long thought about, can blossom once finally started. Now that they had got round to saving their pennies the tin was already showing results. Extremely careful not to go near it when Dennis was about, they had now amassed several pounds in their underground store and the prospect of a country holiday was beginning to seem real.

  Up above, Elfish found no money. She felt slightly desperate, and wondered if anyone else in the house might have some alcohol. If they had, it would be well hidden from her, and Perlita was hanging around downstairs which would hinder her in making a thorough search.

  She picked up her copy of Romeo and Juliet, intending to learn the last few lines of the speech, but was interrupted by Perlita knocking on her door.

  Perlita smiled at her. She was always smiling. Elfish detested her.

  “Someone put this note through the door for you,” she said, handing Elfish a scrap of paper with her name on it.

  Elfish took the note.

  Full as a Bee with Thyme, and Red,

  As Cherry harvest, now high fed

  For Lust and action; on he’ll go,

  To lye with Mab, though all say no.

  —HERRICK

  Elfish was completely bewildered by this. Why had a peculiar poem about Queen Mab suddenly appeared through her door? What did it mean? Where had it come from? Who was Herrick?

  She was gripped by a great unease. She did not understand it but surely it was some form of subtle attack. She studied it suspiciously, glaring at the paper as if it might suddenly lash out and attack her. Where could it possibly have come from? Perhaps it hadn’t really been pushed through the door. Perlita might have written it herself to upset her. It could be part of their ongoing campaign to get her out of the house. Or it might be from Mo. But why sign himself Herrick? Perhaps Herrick was the name of Mo’s new drummer and Mo had recruited him solely to write unsettling poems and send them to Elfish. She pondered it for a long time, pacing up and down in her small dark room.

  Eventually Elfish noticed that her copy of Romeo and Juliet was still in her hand. Remembering that she had been about to finish learning the speech she tossed the mysterious note on the floor. She tried to put her disquiet out of her mind and run through the large portion of the speech she already knew before studying the few remaining lines.

  O! then, I see, Queen Mab hath been with you.

  She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes

  In shape no bigger than an agate-stone

  On the fore-finger of an . . .

  Elfish came to a halt. A small tremor of panic ran over her as she realised that she could not remember any more. The shock of receiving the poem seemed to have driven it right out of her memory.

  twenty-three

  SHONEN FORGOT TO water her plants for several weeks, being too upset by the general state of her life to care for them. They all died, despite a strenuous last-ditch campaign to turn things round with food, water, love and attention.

  Another disaster, she thought, and it ran easily through her mind that it was no wonder that a person with bulimia should be incapable of looking after plants. Dying plants was only one manifestation of the complete inability she felt to do anything at all.

  Shonen’s compulsive eating and vomiting was worsening under pressure. The clerk at the social security had just warned her about coming in late to sign on. It would be two days before she got her next girocheque and she had no money whatsoever. In total desperation she had even looked around the shelves of job opportunities at the jobcentre but there were no jobs there. If there had been, Shonen would not have felt well enough to take one, or even to apply.

  Her theatre group had just failed to win a grant from the Arts Council. Their projected autumn tour was now cancelled and there was talk of disbanding. At this moment Shonen should be sorting through her directory of organisations which gave grants and making ready a list to present to her fellow performers, but it seemed like too much trouble. The overwhelming probability was that no one would give them any money. They would be unable to carry on.

  Shonen had always wanted to participate in a small theatre group which was run by the performers themselves. She was surprised that the ambition of a lifetime could evaporate so quickly.

  Having an irresistible urge to eat she filled herself up with apples. She was not particularly fond of apples but as they contained relatively few calories it made her feel not quite so bad inside to be eating them.

  Still, it made her feel bad enough to vomit them up right afterwards, and as she stood by the toilet, flushing it rather sadly, it occurred to her that her life was really not going very well. For someone of only twenty-three she seemed already to have amassed many problems.

  The phone rang. It was Elfish bearing news.

  “Shonen, I was right. The woman in the house next door does work as a professional fund-raiser for the theatre. As I said, she owes me a favour for saving her cat from a tree. And, by a lucky chance, she is a particular fan of physical theatre. She says she’ll help you get your group back on the rails.”

  Shonen felt transformed by this small ray of sunshine. In common with the rest of the world she was eager to grasp at any straw which might rehabilitate her dreams. Consequently she failed to reflect that the chances of there being a professional theatrical fund-raiser living next door to Elfish were slim, and the likelihood of Elfish having climbed a tree to save her cat was zero.

  The prospect of a revival in her theatrical fortunes revived her spirits entirely. She went first to her pile of sponsorship forms which she sorted into some sort of order, and next to the trunk where she kept all her old texts from drama school. Down near the bottom she found a copy of Romeo and Juliet. Helping Elfish with the speech did not now seem so difficult.

  Back in Aran’s flat, Aran was frowning at his sister.

  “Does it make you feel at all bad, lying to people like that?” he asked, as Elfish put his phone down.

  “Not at all,” said Elfish. “I had to tell Shonen something positive or she’d never get up the energy to help me.”

  “What about when she discovers you’re lying?”

  Elfish shrugged.

  “Well, by then I’ll have what I want, so who cares? And I really need Shonen’s help now because I’ve forgotten the speech.�
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  “What?”

  “I’ve forgotten it.”

  Aran was sitting down, but had he been standing he would have reeled in shock. This was obviously a disaster. The whole carefully worked-out plan depended utterly on Elfish knowing forty-three lines of Shakespeare in one week’s time. Anything less would lead to total defeat.

  “Well, why did you forget it?”

  Elfish fumbled in her pocket and produced a scrap of paper.

  “Because of this,” she said angrily, and thrust the paper at her brother.

  “Someone pushed it through the letterbox and I was so upset worrying about where it came from and what it meant that not only could I not learn the end of the speech, I forgot all the rest as well. And I can’t remember it today either.”

  Aran studied the note.

  “Who is this Herrick and why is he shoving poems through my front door?” demanded Elfish. “And what’s all this about lying with Mab? Is that meant to refer to me? The man must be some sort of freak.”

  Elfish began to work herself up into a tantrum.

  “Calm down,” said Aran. “Herrick does not want to lie with you. He’s been dead for three hundred years. He was a poet. This is an extract from one of his poems.”

  “Oh.”

  Elfish calmed down a little.

  “Then what does it mean?”

  Aran asked if it had been written by Mo but Elfish could not remember ever having seen Mo’s handwriting. Also, she said, Mo would never have heard of any seventeenth-century poet either.

  “But Cody would,” Aran pointed out. “He is fairly knowledgeable about literature. Not as knowledgeable as me, of course. I imagine that he and Mo deliberately found an obscure Queen Mab poem and sent it to you. Possibly they’re suggesting that they know more about Queen Mab than you do. Possibly it was just meant to upset you.”

  “What a stupid idea,” Elfish said with contempt.

  “Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

  “Absolutely not,” said Elfish, and stormed through to the kitchen to find a beer.

  “Still,” said Aran later, “I don’t understand why it has upset you so much that you’ve forgotten the entire speech.”

  Elfish did not understand this either, but had Mo been there to join in the conversation he could have told her. He recalled very well the time that Elfish had been trying to learn a long set of lyrics the night before a gig and had failed utterly, despite the fact that normally the learning of lyrics did not cause her any problems. Elfish, for all her determination, could not learn lines under pressure. She had demonstrated this several times in the past. In her determination to outsmart Mo, she had neglected to remember this. Mo had not forgotten, which was why he had gone along with the scheme, and was even now spreading the word to his friends about the debacle that was to come. He knew that the pressure would get to Elfish, and he knew that sending her the poem would add to it.

  “No doubt it was a temporary failure only,” said Aran hopefully. “You’ll remember it all soon.”

  Elfish teetered on the brink of depression, but checked herself in time.

  “No doubt,” she said. “Meantime I must pay Mo back for this attack. I thought Shakespeare was the only person to write about Queen Mab and now I find this Herrick did as well. Are there any more obscure Queen Mab poems in the language?”

  “I’m not sure,” admitted Aran. “There might be.”

  “Then please find me one so I can put it through Mo’s letterbox. I refuse to let him think that he knows more than me about Queen Mab.”

  Aran was about to object that finding an obscure Queen Mab poem for Elfish sounded very much like the activity which he was determined to avoid, being still concerned with his overwhelming depression, but he stopped himself. He did not wish to disappoint his sister. Besides, obscure literary research was always fairly appealing to him, provided he had someone to show off the results to.

  Elfish went off to practise. Aran thought about starting the search for a poem but decided it would be unwise to rush into anything. Too much sudden activity might well be injurious to his health. Instead, he thought about his cigarette cards. The brand of cigarettes he smoked were now running a promotion in which each packet contained a card. These were copies of adverts for the cigarettes and were of such artistry that they had won coveted awards from the advertising industry’s panel of top artistic directors.

  There were twenty of the cards and anyone who collected all twenty could send them off and claim a prize of five pounds. Aran had three cards and had intended collecting the set and claiming his free five pounds but general listlessness and depression had prevented him from making much progress.

  He made some calculations. These revealed that even at his normal rate of smoking it would not take him long to collect the entire set. Possibly he could smoke a little more to hurry things along. This seemed like quite a pleasing prospect.

  The phone rang. It was Elfish.

  “Stop sitting around uselessly,” she said. “Get out there and find me a poem.”

  twenty-four

  [ STAGE DIVING WITH ELFISH ]

  The band thrashed their way through their set. Their songs were simply structured but they played the chords extremely fast, so fast that all that was discernible was a continuous deep roar of brutal guitar noise punctuated occasionally by fleeting, shrieking high-pitched solos.

  Elfish and Amnesia continued to dive from the stage. After one particularly violent landing Elfish found herself wrapped around various pairs of feet and a full beer can and she shared this with Amnesia before making their next assault.

  The band played louder and faster, the audience danced and shouted and the support band appeared through a door in the back of the stage to sit behind the drummer, tapping their feet and smoking joints. With the stage crowded and Elfish, Amnesia and the other divers in full cry, it was a very active event, and fun for all. Elfish’s melancholy departed entirely when she was midway between the stage and the upturned hands of the crowd. As she thudded on to their heads and disappeared from view into the heaving mass of sweating bodies, she could even be seen to smile.

  “I regard this stage diving as very dangerous,”Aran told her, often, but as Aran was dull enough to make a joke that possibly the stage diving could be regarded as a Brechtian interruption between the performers and the audience, and then repeat this joke whenever he remembered it, she did not listen to his views too closely.

  Amnesia was jumping further than Elfish. She made one spectacular leap after another. Elfish could never quite match her. After one prodigious jump Amnesia found herself wrapped around Mo who was enjoying himself in the moshpit, violently crashing into everyone around him. Elfish saw this from the stage and frowned a little at the sight of Mo helping Amnesia to her feet in what seemed to be an unnecessarily intimate manner, that is by her breasts, but she ignored it, and tried to jump as far. She failed in this but it was a good jump nonetheless, and she crashed down again, pummelling the heads of the crowd and moving a few yards along their hands before turning upside down and sliding down through them to the floor. She fought her way to her feet and began to use her elbows in pursuit of Amnesia who was already back at the front of the stage, negotiating the bouncers.

  twenty-five

  “AFTER COUNTLESS HOURS of difficult and laborious research I have managed to unearth another Queen Mab poem,” said Aran, proudly handing a sheet of paper to Elfish. “It was published in 1648,” he added, superfluously.

  Elfish examined the poem.

  If ye will with Mab find grace,

  Set each Platter in his place:

  Rake the Fier up, and get

  Water in, ere Sun be set.

  Wash your Pailes, and dense your Dairies;

  Sluts are loathsome to the Fairies:

  Sweep your house: Who doth not so,

  Mab will pinch her by the toe.

  —HERRICK

  Elfish was slightly suspicious of this, feeling that pos
sibly all this talk of sluts and uncleanliness might be aimed at her, but Aran assured her it was not.

  “It just so happened that the only Mab poem I could find was about being clean and tidy. What’s wrong? You don’t seem very pleased.”

  Elfish admitted that she was a little disappointed because the poem was by the same person who had written the verse Mo sent to her.

  “I was hoping for something even more obscure than Herrick so that Mo would know I could not be intimidated by Cody’s learning.”

  “I’m sorry, Elfish, it was the best I could do. I spent hours searching and of course I’m an expert at this sort of thing. I don’t think there are any more poems about Mab.”

  What Aran had actually done was walk reluctantly to the library and flick through a volume of Herrick’s collected works. It had taken him no more than fifteen minutes but he knew that Elfish was not going to realise this. He figured that this counted as quite a lot of work anyway, particularly as he should have been at home watching daytime television.

  Elfish shrugged.

  “Well, it will do anyway. No doubt when Mo sees this he will be filled with terror and remorse, and realise that I am well on the way to another success. Not that there was ever any doubt about me succeeding anyway.”

  “So have you learned the rest of the speech?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Elfish.

  “Have you remembered the bit you forgot?”

  “Only up to line two. But I’m sure I’ll do better tonight. Before that though I have to go and see May who lives on the Tulse Hill estate. I’ve heard she’s a good guitarist so I’m going to recruit her. What’s her address?”

  Aran frowned. May was not a good memory for him. She had been one of his attempts to seek physical comfort after his breakup with his girlfriend.

  “What’s the matter? Can’t you remember the address?”