Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving (11 page)

“I wish I could do that,” said Aran.

“Me too,” said Elfish.

“I have eight different cigarette cards now.”

“Really. Eight already? Well done.”

As
American Gladiators
came to an end they drifted off to sleep in a loose embrace.

Outside, Cary and Lilac were mildly disgruntled at their failure to earn money washing windscreens. On arrival at their first prospective site they had found it already occupied by six people, all of whom were larger than them and all of whom indicated a strong desire for Cary and Lilac to disappear quickly. They had then walked all the way down to the next major road junction at Vauxhall, usually
a fertile site for windscreen cleaners, and were pleased to find no one there. Unfortunately they soon discovered that this was because the police had moved them all on and they were forced to leave when a police van drew up and a constable gave them a warning.

What else could they do for money?

They had phoned up the agency for the Bronte School of English but they did not need any more people to hand out leaflets and after that they were stuck. Although they had no more ideas they were not disheartened.

“Something will turn up,” said Lilac. “Tomorrow we should just walk around Brixton for a while. Probably we'll meet someone who'll offer us some work.”

Cary and Lilac both shared some sort of optimistic new-age philosophy, the general gist of which was that things usually turned out all right if you just expected them to.

Their problems therefore settled, they carried on placing daisies in each other's hair.

[ STAGE DIVING WITH ELFISH ]

ELFISH EXPLAINED HER frustrations to Shonen.

“I went round to visit May on the Tulse Hill estate and she didn't live there anymore because all the squatters on the estate have just been evicted. The council used PIOs to get them out quickly.”

Shonen understood what this meant. PIO stood for “Prospective Intended Occupant” and was a legal order the council could obtain from a magistrate to save the time of preparing a court case for a normal eviction, which could take some months. With a PIO, no notice or formalities were necessary and the squatters could be evicted immediately.

For the council to be able to do this they were actually supposed to have tenants waiting to move into these flats but the council were not too bothered by legal technicalities like this. They had no hesitation in using PIOs and then boarding up the flats and leaving them vacant.

This was what had happened on the Tulse Hill estate and the flats now stood empty, barricaded behind bolted-on metal shutters.

“It's disgusting,” said Elfish.

“Yes,” agreed Shonen. “Now more people are homeless and there are even more empty flats.”

What Elfish had actually meant was that it was disgusting that she could not find May when she wanted her, but she let it pass.

Shonen was genuinely troubled, though. In Brixton, as in all parts of London, the number of homeless people had been growing at an alarming rate; hopeless defeated people sitting in doorways, apparently without hopes or dreams. The sight of this was very distressing to her.

“What happened to May?”

“I tracked her down to Camberwell. She is living in the bus with four New Zealanders and three other Irish people till she finds another place to stay. I asked her about joining my band but she wasn't keen. She said she had too many things on her mind to play music. I would have just forgotten about it but I don't have time to hunt around for more people so I asked if she wanted to call round for a cup of tea. A cup of tea is quite an attractive prospect when you're living in an old bus.

“When she came I let her play my guitar and she's really good. She was hitting it like a madwoman. You'd have sworn there was a motorway pile-up going on in the corner of the room. So I must have her in the band.”

This was not going to be easy because May was, as reported by Aran, severely depressed by her experiences in prison and was having great difficulty in managing her life. The sudden eviction had not helped and May had told Elfish that her continual inability to find anywhere secure to live in London had completely drained her spirit.

“Well, that's easily solved,” Elfish had told her. “Chevon is moving out of here next week and you can have her room. You will be secure here.”

At this, May's spirit had revived, and she had agreed to play guitar with Elfish.

“I didn't know Chevon was moving out,” remarked Shonen.

“She isn't,” said Elfish. “But May is not to know that. And I told
May that the reason Chevon is having to move is because we found out she'd been stealing money from the telephone box so she mustn't mention it to her as it's a very touchy subject.”

“What'll happen when May finds out it's not true?”

Elfish shrugged. By that time the gig would be over. Elfish would have the name Queen Mab and May could live in a cardboard box under Waterloo Bridge as far as she was concerned.

In the meantime there was the problem of finding a guitar for May. She had lost hers some time ago during an eviction. Elfish, indefatigable, was now determined to get one for her.

“I saw one in the little secondhand music shop and it was good but I couldn't afford it. But I'll get it, I'll think of something. I will have a band by Saturday. Now, about this speech.”

Elfish noticed that Shonen had left the room, and waited impatiently.

“Have a good vomit?” said Elfish as Shonen returned. Shonen lowered her eyes, unable to joke about it.

“The speech.”

“Right. The speech.”

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I'm not very good at teaching people things,” said Shonen. “Excuse me.”

She hurried out of the room. Elfish dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and wished desperately that she knew anyone else in the whole world capable of teaching her how to learn forty-three lines of Shakespeare, because if she did she swore she would never pay a visit to this bundle of neuroses again.

ARAN HAD FINISHED reading Herodotus. Having already read Thucydides and Xenophon he was now a knowledgeable man when it came to Ancient Greek historians and he was armed with many long anecdotes about Athenians, Spartans and Persians. This was not necessarily good news for the rest of the world but Aran was always willing to try. When Elfish arrived he started right in with an account of the overthrow of Croesus, King of Lydia. Elfish immediately put up a strong defence, telling him that she had no time to listen to a tale about the overthrow of Croesus, King of Lydia, as she was visiting with the express purpose of learning her speech.

“It's a very good story.”

“No doubt, but some other time. The gig is in five days. Even now Mo's band is practising and I must make some progress. Help me learn.”

Aran was not enthralled with the prospect. He had not yet given up all hope of relating the story of Croesus, King of Lydia, and tried to reintroduce the subject, but his sister judiciously disengaged his attention from the ancient world by asking him about his cigarette card collection.

“How many do you have now?”

“Twelve. Well, I've got more than twelve, but lots of them are doubles. I have twelve different ones. I estimate that I will be able to claim my five pounds reward very soon. Do you want to see them?”

“Later. Now I want to learn the speech.”

“Well, all right. Shakespeare it is. What is that smell?”

“Probably me,” admitted Elfish. “After drinking all that whisky last night I wet myself. I'll have a bath later. Well, maybe. If I have time.”

Elfish found it hard to focus her attention because she was currently working on another problem, that of Aisha. She had contacted the painter, confidently expecting to find her in her usual nervous and distressed state, in which she should be easily manipulable. Unfortunately for Elfish, Aisha seemed quite happy. Her boyfriend Mory had returned.

This was bad news for Elfish because not only was Aisha too happy to be easily manipulated, she was too busy working on a joint project with Mory to paint a backdrop. Unfortunately for Aisha, Elfish had now determined to have the backdrop and was already making plans.

AS A PASSENGER on the raft, Bomber Harris was no more cheerful than anyone else. He was depressed because so many people criticised him for destroying Dresden in an enormous bombing raid during the Second World War.

Opinion on the raft was divided. Pericles and Cleopatra thought that destroying an enemy city in wartime was an entirely sensible thing to do but Botticelli and Mick Ronson were unhappy about all the civilians who had been killed.

Here Aran intended to move his game into intellectual spheres by making the players become involved in a moral argument, but when he actually tried to do it it did not seem so easy. He sat grappling with the concept but after a few moments he found his attention wandering. Typing moral arguments into his terminal was frankly boring.

To hell with it, he thought, abandoning the idea, and sending in another squadron of screaming gryphons to harass the raft.

In the midst of the battle a new character appeared.

“I demand to know what I am doing on this raft,” said Shonen, and vomited over the side, watched by an unsympathetic Pericles.

“How's the theatre group going?” asked Mick Ronson.

“Terribly,” replied Shonen.

“Well, I guess that's what you're doing here.”

Shonen thought for a moment.

“But Elfish is going to help me to be successful.”

“That's what you think,” muttered Aran, and laughed along with his scratchy tape of the Fall's “League Moon Monkey Mix.”

This amused Aran for a while, programing in Shonen and Aisha as unwitting victims, but later he removed them in case Elfish found out and was annoyed. Elfish's short temper was always liable to be touched off by any small thing she did not like. She was not one of those people who could lightly laugh at themselves. In fact, thought Aran, growing slightly annoyed, Elfish takes herself entirely too seriously.

Had this thought of Aran's been generally known it might well have met with approval, but it would also have met with amusement because Aran himself was well known as a person who really did take himself too seriously: a blinding social affliction—no one can ever recognise it in themselves.

Elfish phoned, demanding to know if he had found a poem for her yet. Aran replied that he had not.

“I've been too depressed to visit the library.”

“You mean you won't even visit a library to help your own sister when she is up against people so desperate as to shove poems by Shelley through her letterbox?”

Her brother gave in and agreed to go out and research although this was not something he wished to do. Whilst Aran might like to give the impression that he was quite at home in a library, surrounded by literature, he was really far happier at home playing video games and watching daytime television, and ogling the young female presenters.

Back onscreen Botticelli was struggling vainly with the rudder. Aran was not totally satisfied with his choice of Botticelli as an occupant of the raft.