Note: The Cross Bones yard in Redcross Way was a dumping place for unwanted bodies for around 500 years. It is currently empty. London Underground would like to sell off the valuable land for use as office blocks.

 

“The pay is thirty four pound- from 6pm through to eleven the next morning”

 

Sally Benson was impressed. Two pounds an hour! Peak Freans, where she normally worked, paid £1 4s a day.

 

The man was called André Ferryman. He was smart and fat with a small moustache and bowler hat. More than anything he looked like Oliver Hardy. “Thirty four pound” he repeated. “In your hand.”

 

“But what does she ‘ave to do?” Dad asked again.

 

“As I said, it’s a novelty. ‘Modern Lazarus’ we call it. We shut her in a coffin- but your young lady aint scared of that so you says.”

 

Sally shook her head vigorously. Some people were batty. They were terrified of heights, spiders, undertakers, even walking under ladders…. “I’m scared of dying and toothache.” She said firmly. “I aint scared of your box- Just so long as it’s not one of them iron maidens- you know, with the spikes.”

 

André’s moustache twitched and she saw he wanted to smile. Dad didn’t notice. “One night only.” André assured him. “Thirty four pound.”

 

“How’s she supposed to breathe?” he asked.

 

“Hidden tube. It’s quite safe. We had a lady does it twice a week- rain and shine eh. Charming lady.”

 

“So what happened to her?” Sally demanded.

 

Andre met her eye, and bowed slightly. “She’s… in the family way, miss. We couldn’t shut the lid if you know what I mean. So when I heard your daddy mention you…”

 

Sally looked across. Dad looked bemused. He was strong, a waterman who rowed people to and from the ships in his wherry. He had fingers big as bananas, and a mouth to match, but he couldn’t think straight about things like this.

 

“I’ll do it for cash upfront.” Sally held out her hand to shake André’s. “See you tomorrow night.”

 

“Don’t miss the Ferrymen’s Famous River Fair- Redcross Way- See! The hilarious Doll Family! The extraordinary Bermondsey Dwarf! The mysterious horsleydown mermaid! Be horrified by the Queen Rat! The long-tongued Lime Lady! AND…The modern Lazarus! See miracle-worker Professor André cheat death- See the woman buried before your eyes on Saturday, bought back to life on Sunday!”

 

The generator stood in the centre of the yard, flywheel still. A couple of men were feeding cables towards a festoon of lightbulbs. Penny booths and stalls were half-up… gambling tents, a shooting range, grossly coloured signs proclaimed the Queen Rat and the Walworth Dwarf.

 

“Barmy place to have a funfair.” Sally said to André. “Thought this place was a church land- or something.”

 

“Land’s land.” Andre shrugged. “We used to have a friend in the London county council. He got us Southwark Park last time. But he copped it.”

 

“Couldn’t you bring him back to life?”

 

Andre grinned. “You’re too good for a biscuit factory, love. Here we are.”

 

“It’s tragic when they’re so young, eh? I can see you’re a compassionate lot. My friend here has a hankie for those who needs it. This here young lady was Sally Benson. Local girl. Sweet nature. But none of us knew she had this condition of the heart- very rare. Situational Coronary Narcolepsy. And breakfast time Thursday, just like that, she drops face-down-dead in ‘er porridge. Yes ladies and gentlemen, on my life, she’d dead as a keg of rocks. Just look for yourselves. And for them who don’t believe their own eyes- maybe even you will believe six foot of solid earth.”

 

Sally lay in the coffin, eyes closed. André had taken her through the act thoroughly, explaining everything. In a second she was going to be touched.

 

“Anyone who wants to take a closer look, now’s yer chance.”

 

His big dirty thumb pulled back her eyelid. Sally lay limply, thinking of thirty-four quid. Easy money for a girl with guts.

 

A lamp swung over her face. Beyond the lamp she caught a glimpse of the inside of the tent. It was dark of course, and it stank- aftershave, booze and fags. The afternoon show was for women and kids, but tonight was the main attraction, and the tent was packed with men. “It’s a shilling tonight.” Andre had explained, winking. “But a pound each come Sunday morning.”

 

Sally didn’t move.

 

“From the dust we come, to the dust we return.”

 

Slam.

 

That was Andre, closing the top. Panic overwhelmed her. Seventeen hours in a box!

 

Crack-crack-crack went the hammer, painfully loud. By wriggling a bit, she got fingers in her ears. Her heart cantered. In the tent above, André placed the last nail. Three more thumps and it was secure. Then, with a lurch, the coffin dropped into its hole.

 

It was completely black inside. Sally continued to gasp, fish-like, trying to gain control. Deep breaths, Andre said, and slow. There’s plenty of air.

 

A heavy rattle told her that the first clod of earth was in. Sally squeezed her eyes shut. All those deep breaths were making her dizzy. Another spadeful of earth fell. Sally held her jaw firm. She wasn’t such a sop as that.

 

More earth fell, and more. Gradually the clatter became more distant. Peace pressed reassuringly from all directions, and Sally began to relax. Her body was loose, that was a blessing, and she wasn’t prone to cramp. With a bit more wriggling, she found the small bag of toffees André had put in her jacket pocket.

 

It was warm down there. The lid was two inches from her nose. Bloody lovely.
Gradually Sally became aware of countless tiny tickles. Just so long as we’re not on an ant’s nest, she thought, squeezing her toes in and out. Five minutes later she realised that she was thirsty.

 

Very thirsty.

 

The clean mossy rot of earth filled her nostrils.

 

Bloody queer place to have a funfair, she thought again. Bermondsey was full of bombsites, but this wasn’t one of them. It was just a bit of empty ground, nothing on it. Like a spare piece of London. Then, suddenly, she remembered.
When they were kids they called it ‘the old cross bones’ and said you shouldn’t go in. Later they found out it was an excommunicate graveyard. A resting place for nameless bodies. Bodies who weren’t welcome in a proper churchyard. Thieves and fences. Heathens and witches, abortions, mobsters and prostitutes.

 

They gathered around her.

 

Sally heard a voice speaking. It was muffled, but definite. Must be André, shouting through the breathing-hole. “How did you get on?” she called back, meaning ‘how much money did you take?’

 

The box pushed her words back in her face.

 

“André?” she repeated. “André? André?”

 

There was no reply.

 

“Hello?!” she shouted. She wasn’t supposed to be noisy of course, but it didn’t seem to matter. Her voice was stuck in the casket with her. After a few more fruitless yells she fell silent. Then she heard it again; a voice, muffled but definite.

 

its our garden

 

“Who are you?” she whispered.

 

The voice whispered back.

 

sisters and brothers fathers and mothers sons and daughters

 

Sally had never felt her own life as powerfully as she did at that moment. Blood surged through her veins. Breath rushed into her throat. Her lips formed the words without sound. “Do you live down here?”

 

we don’t live

 

“I’m sorry” Tears started to run from her eyes, sideways into her hair. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

 

its our garden

 

Sally couldn’t stop the crying. It was as if all the tears that had never been shed for these dead people were being wept now through her eyes.

 

you can cry until your eyes burst

 

They surrounded her. Men and women, children and babies, piled on top of each other, layered and mixed. Snatches of hopes rags of fear, of passion and of love seamed the ground like coal. “Let me out!” she screamed. “Dig me up!” But Andre didn’t hear her.

 

our garden

 

“When did you die?” Sally asked. “What’s your name?”

 

But there was no reply. They weren’t people any more. All mixed together in a cake of silence. An hour went by.
Thirst returned, worse than ever.
She hadn’t drunk much beforehand, scared of weeing in the coffin. Slowly, Sally pulled out a second toffee, and started to suck. It made things worse. Her mouth was gummy and acidic.

 

An hour passed, or maybe less. Sally felt the wedge of notes, where she’d hidden them, in the elastic of her pants. Her thoughts went around in her head.

 

“What do you do down here?” she asked through sticky lips. The answer came back, distinct and still.

 

wait

 

“Do you ever get thirsty?”

 

There was no reply. Her throat was hurting. Suddenly Sally knew that she would give back every one of those pound notes right now, for a single drink of water.

 

“Can you help me?”

 

The reply was indistinct.

 

“Please help me,” she lisped. “I need some water. Please. I beg you.”

 

The people heard her and came closer. As they came upon her, the earth started to penetrate her flesh. It filled her lungs and her eyes, it entered her ears and blood. The thirst was blotted out, the longing was gone, the tickles on her feet were killed stone dead. Sally came into the beautiful darkness of the garden and waited patiently.

 

At 10.30 on Sunday morning, a crowd was gathered in Redcross way. Men in caps and bowlers, men in trilbys and pork-pies. Some even had their sons, missing church for the spectacle. It was a golden August morning, the fireweed was starting to go to seed. It made white fluff which floated in the sunlight.

 

Andre opened the tent on the dot of eleven. He produced a spade, declaring. “Which of you strong young man will dig her up?”

 

A fellow came forward and set to digging. Spadeful after spadeful of soil was discarded around the edge of the plot. Everyone watched him work, breathing hard and sweating. No one spoke. Finally the lid of the coffin was revealed, the polished pine, the cheap brass fittings. “Now…” Andre announced. “Who here’s got a claw hammer?’

 

No one spoke.

 

“None of you? Then she’ll have to stay dead!”

 

A few men laughed uneasily. Andre pulled out the hammer, and with a practiced movement, levered out the nails one at a time. He lifted the lid. Everyone looked down to see Sally’s face.

 

There it was, very pale, eyes shut.

 

“Wake up.” Andre proclaimed. “Arise!”

 

With one dirty thumb, he pulled back her eyelid. Behind the lid was earth. With a snap, Andre drew back his hand.

 

That evening he decided to bury the body again. But first he remembered to take the thirty-four quid from her knicker-elastic. He had bills to pay. She wouldn’t need it anyway.

As I slipped into silk underwear and dabbed perfume behind my knees, you should have been there. As I hurried to dress and skipped down the stairs, I remembered the first time you kissed me. I remembered us being sweethearts, my puppy love. How you surprised me when you contacted me on the internet after over twenty years. For months we wrote to each other, each teasing email, a little more flirtatious, revealing. Finally this provoked me to invite you to meet me, I typed:
Saturday at 8pm. Trafalgar Square. Meet me by the lions and wear a flower in your lapel.

 

Oh, you should have been there, as I rode the tube to Charing Cross, I was smiling to myself. You didn’t reply, you didn’t promise anything, but I saw you had read the invitation. I said to myself, oh you funny tease, how you keep me guessing, maybe you’ll just show up, what if you just show up. I planned to hold your hand down Villiers Street, to drink with you on the balcony of the Oxo Tower, walk with you along the Southbank. It was such a beautiful rose evening, it was the perfect night for losing your head and letting go of the side.

 

The train was hot with skin, stinking of sweat and grease. There was a gang of noisy and exuberant Dubliners. They stared hard at my cleavage and legs. They gaped at me, they made gestures and talked behind their hands. I found a pamphlet and studied the words so I could ignore their hungry gazes. Although funnily enough, there was one that looked like you, so I gave him the smallest of smiles. He grinned as though I looked good enough to eat. I briefly caught my reflection in the glass and thought that maybe you’d look at me like that too. That Irish boy had your twinkling eyes, when he smiled he had your dimples, the hairs on his tan freckled arms were pale as hay.

 

I raced up the escalators, I was wearing knee-high boots in case I might have to run away from you. You see, it had occurred to me you might be a murderer. I had flashes of fear picturing my assasination, how you’d shoot me like a sniper from the roof of The National Gallery. I imagined you slitting my throat. I imagined that in your home there was a dungeon wall-papered with pictures of me with the eyes scissored out. From that extreme to the next my head raced, until I settled on the notion that when we met it could be awkward, that perhaps we’d find we have nothing in common, but then again, imagine if we felt the same.

 

Imagine if we felt the same! I took the stairs two at a time in haste and started chuckling, I was out of breath and rushing as though I thought you’d be there. I laughed out loud at the ridiculous joke. Then I looked up at the time and I was seven minutes late. What if you had waited and left already?

 

I hurried towards Trafalgar Square and saw a handsome fellow in a crisp white shirt coming from the opposite direction. It was startling and compelling, I thought it was you, that maybe you really had waited and given up. When we passed each other, there was a moment in that glance, a sense of longing, something mutual and familiar. I was wearing sunglasses and wondered if you didn’t recognise me. For a good few seconds I turned back. The man had slowed right down, he was walking backwards and gazing back at me. My heart pounded for he was the same auburn and chestnut colouring as you. But surely you’d call out my name, take me in your arms and say, my love it’s me, have you forgotten me? No my love, I would beam up at you, how could I ever forget? Then we’d be sweet and quite shy, we’d laugh and embrace. I walked into the sunlight and crossed the road knowing we might not even recognise each other after all these years.

 

Oh you should have been there, to see me arrive in Trafalgar Square. I looked up at Nelson’s Column protruding into a June blue sky, there were scoops of vanilla and raspberry clouds. The lions teased me and said, look at the hapless romantic, the nostalgic, look at the believer in old flames! I lit a cigarette and walked among the pigeons.

 

Were you there hiding from me behind a tree? Were you photographing me? Were you laughing to yourself – Ah ha, look how I can make her wait, look what a fool! Can she not see she is far too old for giddy girlhood daydreams? Would you later email these photographs to me so I would know you were there? Then in these creul photographs would I see the sad portrait of a desperate woman chasing bubbles? I span around, I tried to have eyes in the back of my head to catch your lens. The lions taunted me, what an ego she has, they said, what vanity, does she think she is that interesting?

 

I was about to give up, but then I saw you on the other side of the Square. It was your walk, that swagger and you were wearing a baseball cap. I walked very slowly through the crowds. I was sure it was you this time, I wanted to approach you and put my hands over your eyes and say, guess who? But that boy was hugged by a pink and strawberry blonde. They kissed with a flourish of young heat and I realised he was like you, but when you were fifteen. I had to remind myself we are older now, I told myself to look for a man not a boy.

 

So, I continued searching for you among the older men, the bald, the fat or bearded men; there were freckled men, sunburnt men, crippled men, hairy men, tattooed men, drunk men, short men, gay men, homeless men, exotic men, sick men, men in hats and sunglasses, men hiding behind cameras…I studied all the men that seemed to be alone and waiting for something. A cross dresser on a park bench stared at me for a very long time and I even thought that might be you too.

 

There were couples, families on day trips, some with young children and babies which chased pigeons clapping their hands. Then I thought, are you married? I imagined your wife, and a chill ran through me with the image of a furious woman storming through the crowds towards me to scratch my eyes out having discovered and read our emails.

 

Silly sentimentalist, I must have made this date with myself to remind myself of something. I had set myself up. I sat on the edge of the water fountain, the spray was cool on my skin. I looked into the blue water and saw my refelection and I saw the truth, the reflection of time and the clouds above me. I saw I was alone and I looked into my eternal reflection in my sunglasses and in the surface of the water, mirror to mirror.

 

A yellow Puerto Rican boy sat beside me and asked me for a light. He told me my dress was pretty. He sat so close to me and for so long it was awkward. Then I wondered if he had been writing the emails. I searched his face to see if his eyes would give him away, to see if he was enjoying this trick. He asked me if I had a boyfriend. I nodded. I was thinking, I am waiting for love. He walked away, my eyes followed him to see if his shoulders were shaking with laughter. They didn’t and he walked alone circling the Square.

 

Big Ben was bronze, coppery with sunset. An hour had past and the bells tolled nine times and I knew you were not there. I walked back towards Charing Cross wondering if this lesson had been learnt. At home that same night, the curtains wafted in the perfume of night-blooming jasmine. I ran a bubble bath and wiped the steamed-up mirror and took a good long hard look at myself. The girl and the dreamer inside me grinned at a new womanly face, my dilating pupils were filled with stars and mischief. I wondered if you would believe that I waited for you in Trafalgar Square. I believe I met myself there, I will never tell you that I waited for you there, because, oh, you should have been there.

Salena Godden appears with Peter Coyte as Saltpeter (saltpeter.co.uk) and has performed in the Australian outback and to resistance fighters in East Timor. She has previously collaborated with Coldcut and Alabama 3. Her poetry and creative fiction has been published widely and her debut novel Springfield Road is released by Harper Collins in April 2009.

The invite for The Insiders Party came in a blister pack on a blustery Wednesday afternoon. The plastic rectangle emblazoned with bare facts suggested there’d be little glamour in the occasion. It seemed to insinuate that were fame a drug, this party was your next hit. I wondered who’d sent me the coveted invite. Every aspiring artist in the city, from introspective bedroom musicians to confrontational comedians on the toilet circuit, craved this invite. I recalled a theremin solo I’d performed on a noisy art-rock bands debut single a few months ago, and put it down to that.

 

I’d all but abandoned any dreams of indie fame by the time it fell on my doorstep. I’d spent years playing the tortured front man in a string of bands that had failed to achieve stardom. I’d consoled myself with many excuses for this lack of success, blaming it variously on the rangy accomplices I employed and the haircut I hadn’t updated. Ultimately though, I knew the reason behind my failure was simple: lack of talent. I’d felt liberated by this realization, and quietly had retired from the music scene (with little column inches dedicated to my demise) to work as a hospital porter.

 

One day, a friend who worked at the local studio gave me a call. ‘I’ve got a band called The Charity Shop Pin Ups coming in this afternoon’ Martin had said. ‘They fall over too often to stay in time and I need someone, who knows his way round a tennis racket, to help knock their songs into shape. I’ll give you fifteen quid an hour if you’ll spend the afternoon with them’.

 

I’d been reluctant to spend that long with five malnourished boys desperate to inevitably appear on reality TV, but perhaps my indie dreams hadn’t died completely. I soon found myself in the studio, my unfaithful mistress of a guitar under my arm, slightly too keen to impress anyone nearby with a wonky haircut. The band was even more dreadful than I’d imagined; all spray on black jeans, panda-eyed ennui and bad posture. Every member was accompanied by a gum-chewing, hairspray-drenched girlfriend permanently glued to her mobile phone.

 

But having coaxed them through that afternoon, two months later I found the barrage of noise I’d negotiated from them smeared all over the radio. I blanched at those lyrics about Lady Diana and Maxine Carr, hollered over a mass of detuned guitars. I wasn’t surprised I’d never made it.

 

‘Is that an invite for The Insiders Party?’ Beverley asked, pinching it from my hands. The towel swathed around her head made her appear an odd combination of Cheltenham receptionist and tribal queen. ‘We’re going’ she instantly decided, the circles of makeup round her eyes widening as she clasped it to her chest. I knew that look. It was a look I’d imagine a call centre operative perhaps having if two of her lottery numbers appeared on screen, leaning forward with a false sense of inevitability, convinced she’ll soon be away from touchtone handsets forever.

 

I’d met Beverly when she was working on the reception at the local health spa. I used to cut through there to get to the practice rooms upstairs for free. Beverley seemed to understand the unrealistic dreams that fester in us, while being kindly dismissive of them coming to anything. One day, as I’d lugged my amplifier past her desk again, she’d offered me the spare room in her flat. I soon moved in and we became friends. Though she had little time for unrealistic ambitions, perhaps due to a reluctance to entirely accept her own life she was eager to be in the company of those she saw as glamorous. I’d see a look of ruthless ambition well up in her usually calm eyes. ‘No, no, you’re really good’ she’d say at the Dog and Parrot, when forty minutes of my bands songs had pushed every punter into the pool room. Once I moved in, I found her reassuring tone started to become a curiously addictive comfort.

 

A week later, despite my reservations, I felt a distinct sense of excitement as the taxi pulled up outside The Insiders Party. The drivers open disdain about the place only made Beverly and I feel privy to some secret pleasure. ‘This is it, I’m afraid’ he said, pulling up outside a grim-looking Catholic Working Men’s Club.

 

‘Ah, it’s incognito’ Beverley hissed, struggling with the vernacular. She pressed a note into the driver’s hand as a small mob of boys in badly applied makeup gathered round the entrance. ‘I’m going to get myself such a husband tonight’ she whispered, gathering up her Babydoll dress and splashing into the puddles outside.

 

I’d not expected lavish décor in a club keen to be cutting edge, but I was nonetheless surprised as we walked in to see the enormous contrast it housed. Haircuts and faces I’d only ever seen in digitally enhanced photos clutched cocktails and teetered about to Belle and Sebastian. They stood out against cheap tinsel that appeared left over from an office party. I’d always believed, ridiculously, that famous people lived in an enclosure separated from humanity by velvet rope. That they would never had to contend with standing in freezing rain for the number 29 bus, or dropping your groceries in the queue at the Co-op. But the contrast between their famous faces and the cheapness of the decor destroyed such misconceptions. The obscure film projected against the back wall, a mesh of soft-focus colors, seemed the room’s only concession to credibility.

 

We waited at the bar for overpriced gins. Beverly laughed infectiously at the barmaids’ needlessly fascistic queuing system. Kate Bush trilled out of the speakers, prompting a flurry of plastic handbags to be thrown down onto the dance floor, like synthetic campfires to be danced around by peroxide-haired Red Indians.

 

I’d seen this room so many times in pictures. I’d even studied them, hoping one day to be permitted access off the back of my own artistic merit. I’d somehow thought that being amongst these people would make me like them: influential, relevant, considered. As the dance floor filled, I got to know the internal lunge you feel when you see someone you recognize having never met them. They continue to stagger through their lives, but their proximity means more than you’d like to admit. It seems unfair that they are there existing in front of you, while the importance of it remains unacknowledged. Whenever I saw someone I recognized from a weekly glossy, I felt a ridiculous urge to approach them and say ‘is it really you? It’s just- I thought you lived in another world. Stop carrying on as though it’s not a big deal you’re here. I’m validated by being in a room with you.’ And then there’s that ridiculous desire to collect some sort of souvenir from them. An autograph, or an anecdote which includes ruffling their hair perhaps. Is that strange compulsion to transcend formality a symptom of the modern age, where anyone can be famous, yet it still feels that no one can?

 

Something childlike about these peculiar stars fascinated me. The dance floor was now filled with beta males in frilly shirts, po-going to Pulp with a dramatic lack of self-awareness. At school these charming, awkward misfits would have been bullied for their dreamy natures, but here their oddness was celebrated. For some reason I felt as if I was one of them. That their strangely sincere, spasmodic movements championed my own sense of isolation. Yes, I’d become a hospital porter instead of a celebrated synth-player, but even so I was here off the back of a reasonably good theremin solo I’d written. Even if I no longer lived my life in a wilderness of artistic misunderstanding, that sense of apartness hadn’t left me. And now these prophets of our particular triumphs, these malformed mediums of empathy, had joined The Insiders Party. The freak on the sidelines, unable to play on the left-wing at school due to asthma, was now centre-stage flinging gladioli and being considered.

 

It seemed they had paid their dues through years of standing sulkily at the side of the crowd. Now they were being lauded for the very characteristics that had separated them. There seemed something insincere about those who didn’t fit that description though. Who now applauded misfit behavior as inspired, but who’d have thrown chips at them on the bus a few years ago.

 

A group of petite women clutching fake fur stoles stood pigeon-toed at the side, waiting for their underfed heroes to leave their stage. I recognized in their faces expressions I’d seen before. It was the glare of the girl slightly ahead of the fashion at school. The one who’d turn her nose up at someone for wearing Doc Martins that were the wrong colour. But once a record deal validated your gawkiness, you became beyond reproach to such people. They seemed to only celebrate awkwardness when it became sanctioned by proper adults. Or perhaps after their teenage years they’d decided that such misfits represented the only possibility of escape from the mundane. The lack of self-consciousness amongst the famous ones, next to the acute self-awareness of the ex chip-throwers, made for an interesting contrast.

 

Beverly seized my arm. ‘Is that the singer from Loaded Lawn?’ she stage-whispered, pushing herself onto her toes. I looked around to see an unshaven man in his late twenties picking glitter off his shoulder, surrounded by a coterie of admirers. His features were obscured in the shadow cast by his baseball cap. I was struck by the way he composed himself. It seemed to immediately confirm his fame. The people around him were arranged in a strange hierarchy mediated by attention. Whoever he deemed worthy of listening to immediately smiled manically, as though they’d become special in the light of his reflected glory.

 

He held court like a medieval king, dismissing people for not being entertaining enough with ease. As a king might have ordered execution with a wave of his hand, he removed people by feigning acute boredom the instant they grew tiresome. Sometimes, more dramatically, he turned his head away from them mid-sentence, as if discarding them suddenly like a sweet wrapper. Amongst that group the greatest reward seemed to be his attention, or smile. I watched them for a minute, each flailing to catch his eye. What made him more important than anyone else? The medium he’d chosen had a ready-made platform for elevation, but who else in the room had similar ability, given the right chance? What separated him from the other unshaven men seemed to be merely implicit arrogance. It seemed a sudden dose of self-awareness might be indie kryptonite. Carry yourself like a star, it appeared, and the world soon acquiesced. The presumptuousness of such confident dishonesty then perpetuated itself.

 

Beverly was chatted up by a messy-haired bassist, eventually yielding to the details of his half-truths. The singer from The Charity Shop Pin Ups seemed pleased to catch my eye as his hand was stamped at the door. He appeared reluctant to greet me directly though, even if I had re-written his entire oeuvre in one afternoon. He carried himself with a careful shyness that courted attention, along with his handmade ‘I Hate The Kings of Leon’ t-shirt. Despite the warmth of my cynicism, I slipped into a fawning manner as we spoke, his shifting eyes passing over my face and shoulder. He didn’t mention that my efforts may have contributed to his success, or acknowledge that I had done anything for him. Our stilted, unbalanced, conversation faltered as a woman in black-rimmed glasses and a puffy dress stopped in front of him. ‘My god, it’s you!’ she hissed. ‘The singer from The Charity Shop Pin Ups.’ His reaction to her interested me. His first instinct was to be appalled by her sycophancy. But his second was to clearly wish she’d greeted him louder.

 

‘How are Alvin, Simon and Theodore?’ I asked as she shimmied away.

 

‘We’ve split up’ he replied. ‘We toured both sides of the Pennines, and then our bassist quit with nervous exhaustion’.

 

‘Is he checking into The Priory?’ I asked, tongue in cheek.

 

He nodded at a frail-looking woman in a satin skirt. ‘No. His parents live in the Cotswolds. They’re nursing him better.’

 

He continued talking, in a secretive whisper which thrilled me, describing his new plans. I was appalled to hear my words came out lacquered with effusiveness. I became horribly eager to laugh at the slightest humorous intonation in what he said. It had been few months since his flush of success, but despite having musicians queuing up to work with him he’d been unable to keep a new lineup together for a week. ‘I’ve had to start working at The Cash and Carry’ he said. ‘Though if anyone in music finds out, I’m finished’.

 

I wondered if brief fame had convinced him that he could be successful on a whim, that his catalogue of recent failure was meaningless. Or if he was sabotaging his efforts somehow to avoid the realization that his lucky break had passed. I wondered how he had the audacity to achieve success, but not the wherewithal to manage three people long enough to replicate it. The conversation stalled, having only ever been comfortable when focused on him, as a doll-like woman approached us. She wore an oversized pink dress, its sleeves burgeoning from her shoulders. She snaked her arm around his neck. ‘Fancy a little snifter darling?’ she asked, squeezing his shoulder. I noticed that the foundation on her face was an entirely different shade to that on her exposed cleavage. ‘They have unisex toilets here for a reason’ she whispered to him. A smug smile passed onto his face as he mouthed ‘what can you do?’ to me, before allowing himself to be pulled towards the cubicle.

 

A hand seized my elbow. I was relieved to see Martin with Beverly at his side, her lipstick a little smeared. ‘I hope you didn’t spend too long allowing him talk about him’ he said. ‘I can’t stand these musicians of limited talent, who vacuum cocaine at the first sign of success’.

 

‘Me neither’ I replied. As he removed his hand from my shoulder, I noticed at his side a slight girl with long eyelashes and a sequin on her cheek. It seemed she’d expected more glamour from the evening too. ‘This is Rebecca’ Martin said, pushing us closer. ‘And Rebecca, meet the man who turns useless latchkey kids into superstars.’ She smiled, and placed her hand on my elbow. It was twenty minutes later when I realized that I hadn’t stopped talking entirely about me to her. ‘Fancy a little snifter?’ she asked, pointing in the direction of the toilets. Martin had disappeared with Beverley. She took the glass out of my hand and I let her lead me away.


Guy Mankowski was raised on the Isle of Wight. After being educated at Durham and Newcastle Universities, he formed a ‘Dickensian pop band’ with a group of ex-jazz chanteuses and multi-instrumentalists, toured many of England’s most disreputable music venues and signed a record deal on a Soho roof garden. Alba Nova released one EP, which brought some critical acclaim but no money. Guy now works as a psychologist in Newcastle.