“I can't.”
“Why not? You're still fairly attractive and Shonen will probably sleep with anyone who's prepared to listen to her problems for long enough. I would do it myself because you know I always like to fuck Mo's lovers to annoy him but I haven't got time. Also, I must admit I find Shonen fairly disgusting these days. Listening to her neuroses for a few hours would drive me completely mad. But you'll be good at it. You like talking about personal problems. I'm sure if you can make it through to about four in the morning without falling asleep
or displaying too much obvious boredom you'll probably just end up naturally in bed. Go and see Shonen and make yourself useful. Remember, I still need her because I'm stuck on the speech.”
Leaving the studio, Aran remembered to his frustration that he had forgotten to tell Elfish about finding card number three. Perhaps he should go back.
He decided against it. Elfish probably wasn't as interested in his cards as she pretended to be. It struck him that he should have asked his sister how the rehearsal was going. Aran sighed. He could not do anything right these days. What was it about your girlfriend leaving you that made everything so bad?
He shook his head, and tried to walk, but each step felt difficult and he wondered if he should just throw himself under a car and get it over with. A truck would be better. He glanced around to see if there was anything suitable coming along the road. Then he realised that he couldn't throw himself under a truck just now as he was meant to be doing something for Elfish.
A strange and unrecognisable emotion crept into his soul. This unrecognisable emotion was something like a sense of purpose, although it was so long since Aran had had any sense of purpose he would have been unable even to put a name to it.
Elfish's unquenchable drive, which was even now pulling Shonen and the others along in its wake, was also getting to Aran.
Not looking where he was going, he bumped into Cary and Lilac. He cursed himself for his carelessness. Usually Aran kept a close lookout for the hated couple and would take long diversions to avoid having to deal with their cheerfulness.
To his amazement they were not cheerful. They were sad-faced and seemed to have been crying. They stood looking very small and hopeless among the busy crowds outside the tube station.
“Someone stole our money,” they said.
The loss had been devastating to them. Their dreams of a holiday in the country had crumbled into nothing. Their optimistic spirits were crushed. It seemed too hard to start again. They would not now have a holiday. They assumed that Dennis had stolen their money to buy drink. Aran left them in the street, wandering around in purposeless depression.
Aran, who had not asked Elfish how she had paid for her expensive sunglasses, but knew her very well, had a better idea of where the money had gone. He marvelled at his sister's single-mindedness and capacity for direct action. What a woman. In one powerful move she had got herself an excellent item of apparel and delivered a much-needed lesson to Cary and Lilac. It was high time they discovered that life was not all dancing and putting daisies in each other's hair. He nodded in approval as he made his way down to Shonen's.
Back in the studio the rehearsal was going well and everyone's life felt better as the music rolled out, although Elfish's filthy appearance and manic behaviour was a little unsettling to the others. Also unsettling was her new habit of quoting Shakespeare at inappropriate moments. She now did this fairly often, apparently without realising what she was doing.
fifty-six
ELFISH'S PREDICTION CAME true. After listening to Shonen talk about her bulimia, her various other neuroses and their associated problems for five and a half hours, Aran did end up in bed with her. Unfortunately they had some difficulty in having sex. This was due to problems with condoms; that is, Aran found it difficult to put one on. With his stress, depression, increased drinking and huge cigarette consumption, Aran was no longer the potent young man he once had been, and he had found it increasingly difficult to get strong erections in recent sexual encounters. This made the condom a particular problem because the one thing you must have to use a condom is a firm erection. It was, as Aran found to his cost, no use simply trying to stuff a half-erect penis into one and hoping things would get better.
It had started off reasonably enough with Shonen, and he certainly found her thin body very attractive. When she gripped his penis it went hard quickly, or fairly quickly, but the instant he stretched over to remove the condom from its packet things went badly wrong. Reaching down eagerly to slide it on he found to his distress that his cock was no longer hard enough. Seeing his erection disappearing he tried to rush things but this only made matters worse.
“Oh dear,” said Shonen.
“Yes,” said Aran, and dived quickly to lick Shonen's vagina, partly to cover his embarrassment and partly to keep her from losing interest. Shonen squirmed on top of him to suck his cock and to Aran's relief it again went hard.
Now is the moment, he thought, and tore himself free to have another go with the prophylactic. His fingers fumbled nervously with the packet as he tried to rip it open, feeling instinctively that this was a race against time. The packet split apart but in Aran's eagerness he pushed his fingernail straight through the rubber.
“Well, that's not much fucking good,” he snarled. “I thought these things were all electronically tested.”
Shonen waited patiently as he reached for his third condom of the night. He opened this one more carefully and tried rolling it on but he was too late. His erection was fading sadly away, and a general numbness told him that it would be some time in returning.
“Well,” said Shonen. “They are certainly an efficient method of contraception. There seems very little chance of me getting pregnant. What exactly is the problem?”
“Nothing at all,” replied Aran. “Well, not much. I'm just not very good with condoms. They make my erections disappear.”
Shonen seemed interested in this.
“Why?”
“I don't know.”
“Have you seen a doctor?”
“I do not need to see a doctor,” replied Aran defensively. “I just have a problem with condoms, that's all.”
“Perhaps we should try again,” suggested Shonen, always willing to help a lover in distress. “I'll grab your cock, make it go hard and then whip on a condom before it knows what's happening.”
Aran's spirits revived. This seemed worth a try at least.
They got back to lovemaking and Aran tried to put the whole business out of his mind, running his hands over Shonen's body and kissing her with rather more enthusiasm than he normally managed in bed, trying to make up for his failure. Shonen meanwhile manipulated his penis in a fairly determined manner, having already opened a fourth condom, which now lay in readiness.
Judging the moment to be right, Shonen made her move, and fairly flew for the contraceptive. In a blur of movement she had it up and over Aran's penis before he had time to think.
“Success!” they cried together, and Shonen lay back, dragging Aran on top of her.
Aran's anti-condom complex had now become too powerful, however, and in the few seconds it took him to guide his penis between Shonen's legs it had again rebelled and was sinking back down into oblivion. Inside the condom, this made a distressing sight.
“I am a great fan of oral sex,” said Aran. “Better than intercourse, probably,” but he thought some bitter thoughts about all the huge erections he had woken up alone with in the morning, any of which would have served him well tonight.
fifty-seven
CARY AND LILAC tried to raise a little money by selling some cassettes in John Mackie's secondhand music shop. The sum they would earn by this would be very little indeed.
John Mackie looked at the cassettes without enthusiasm. While examining them he handed Cary a leaflet advertising Elfish's gig which was now just two days away.
“Be sure and go to this,” he told them. “They are an excellent band. You'll get in one pound cheaper with this flier.”
It did not strike Cary and Lilac that this was an odd person to be exhibiting such enthusiasm for Elfish because they were really too vague about the world to notice any of its oddities, but many people might have wondered why this elderly and uncommunicative man was suddenly showing such interest in the affair.
Caught up in Elfish's enthusiasm, John Mackie was now firmly committed to her success. He had given her equipment on credit and promised to hand out leaflets to all his customers. As he was now aware of Elfish's need to learn the speech, he was no longer distressed by her habit of mumbling blank verse while checking out a delay unit or a speaker cabinet. He encouraged her in her endeavours and told her that she was making good progress.
Elfish reminded him increasingly of his sister. Because of this John Mackie found that he could now imagine his sister as a real person rather than an idealised image. He remembered that she had been kind to him, and that she too had been musical. But she had not been perfect, she could be argumentative when it suited her. Now that he thought about it, his sister had never been too keen on washing, either. Perhaps if she had been born now she might have worn motorbike boots like Elfish. She might even have pierced her nose with a ring and a stud. This thought actually made him smile.
He felt much better about his sister now. When he lit candles for her soul at St. Mark's Church he would remember her fondly and wish her well instead of shaking his head grimly and feeling only pain.
“We will definitely go to the gig if we can raise the money,” Cary and Lilac told him. “We are friends of Elfish.”
The shop-owner was impressed by anyone being friends with Elfish and kept them talking for a while. He paid them rather more for their old cassettes than they were worth. So impressed was he that he asked if either of them would like the job he was advertising as Saturday Assistant.
Cary and Lilac were a little taken aback to be offered a proper job, even for one day a week. It would be an unusual departure into the real world for them. They agreed, provided they could share the work.
John Mackie was pleased. He was happy to have friends of Elfish's working for him. Cary and Lilac were pleased. They were happy to have the opportunity to earn a little money. They could again start saving for their holiday.
fifty-eight
ARAN WAS NOT pleased to be woken by Elfish at ten o'clock in the morning.
“Beer,” she said. “Quickly.”
Aran followed her through to the fridge where she was already ripping the top off a bottle with the buckle on her jacket.
“I take it Mo has sent you another Queen Mab poem?”
Elfish tore a sheet of paper from her pocket and brandished it at Aran. He was impressed to see that it was a photocopied picture of Queen Mab as depicted by Blake, the famous English poet and artist. He read the caption underneath and saw that it was from Blake's illustrations for Milton's “L'Allegro.” As “L'Allegro” was the poem from which Elfish had last sent a verse to Mo this was certainly an impressive comeback.
“I sent him a poem by Milton and now he's found a picture of the same poem by Blake and sent it back,” wailed Elfish. “It's no good, I can't win. Obviously Cody is undefeatable when it comes to obscure Queen Mab references.”
“He certainly is not,” said Aran, greatly offended. “I will find you another long-forgotten Queen Mab poem in no time. Depend on it. I refuse to let Cody or anyone else know more about English
Literature than me. So calm yourself, Elfish, and let an expert take over.”
Elfish stared at him in astonishment. This was the most positive statement she could ever remember Aran making.
They drank beer for breakfast and listened to Carter's “Under the Thumb and Over the Moon.” The alcohol calmed Elfish down a little and in the cool gloom of Aran's flat she relaxed slightly.
“So you slept with Shonen,” she said. “I trust she is now firmly back on my side?”
Aran was non-committal about this although he claimed to have done his best.
“How is the speech going?”
Elfish shuddered. Her relaxation vanished and on her next attempt at the bottle, beer dribbled down her chin, clearing away a little dirt. The gig was tomorrow. She was too busy to think straight, she had not slept or eaten and was keeping going with amphetamines. She took another beer and buried her head in Shonen's coloured copy of Mercutio's speech and refused to discuss it further.
Aran studied her as she read. He smiled, almost. Considering Elfish's recent activities, he was lost in admiration. Aisha, only last week a tangle of jagged nerves, panic attacks and phobias, all competing for space with her catastrophic depression over her ex-boyfriend Mory, was now transformed. Elfish's assertion that Mory was coming back and her action in giving Aisha a useful task to perform had worked something that seemed like a miracle. Now Aisha spent her days busily painting a huge black sheet to hang behind the band. According to Casaubon, who had been helping her, she showed few signs of nerves and her agoraphobia had receded to the point where she could now go round to the local shop by herself.
Casaubon himself had suffered a similar transformation and the
prospect of seeing his ex-girlfriend Marcia at the gig and sorting out their relationship had breathed fresh life into him. His depression was gone, he was happy painting with Aisha and in between times he was playing his drum kit as never before.
The same could be said for May. Anyone who had known her in the past few months would have described her as an excellent candidate for suicide, but Elfish's offer of a secure place to live seemed to have got to the very root of her problems. She was now both playing the guitar and sorting out her life. She had been down to the unemployment office and signed on, something she had been incapable of before, and promised her friends that after the gig she would find some sort of work to repay her debts. Meanwhile, she practised her guitar every day. Her playing was by all accounts demonic. Even the bored and music-weary attendant at the rehearsal studio had paused, looked up from his newspaper, and nodded appreciatively to himself as the shrieking and demented sound of May and Elfish playing guitar together floated out through the walls of the imperfectly soundproofed practice room.