Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving (22 page)

“I think I'll go and play right now.”

Using her boots and elbows Elfish burrowed her way violently to the stage. She leapt on to it with the power and grace of a seasoned stage diver. She picked up her guitar, turned up the volume till it shrieked with feedback then shouted through the microphone for the sound woman to turn it up further.

Dissatisfied with her fuzzbox she stamped on it and kicked it viciously till it spluttered into overdrive, thus gaining the attention of the crowd. She then began to declaim her speech, punctuating each line with a horribly distorted chord so that the audience shifted around in fear and discomfort. She placed her fingers randomly on the fretboard, creating dreadful clashing disharmonies and each one of these she pulled further into chaos with the tremolo arm on her guitar. These dreadful chords shrieked and whirled around the room, feeding back on each other till the noise was truly dreadful, a fantastical and grotesque cacophony that could never have been imagined and could never be repeated. Elfish roared her Queen Mab speech over the top of this brutal sonic attack, delivering Shakespeare in a uniquely effective and violent manner.

The audience, protesting at first, were soon beaten into submission. They huddled close to their loved ones for protection and gazed in wonder. As the speech came to an end Elfish mouthed a few lines of foul abuse at them all and plunged into her favourite song, “Here Comes the Moon.” Halfway through it she abandoned singing and, still playing her guitar with one hand, began to climb the speaker stack at the side of the stage. It lurched and swayed as she made the ascent and the audience began to cheer.

“Queen Mab, the deliverer of dreams,” cried Elfish. High above the concrete floor, guitar in hand, she leapt out into space in a stage dive that was both utterly spectacular and completely suicidal.

ELFISH HUNG IN the air. She was weighed down and seriously encumbered by her guitar. The strap and lead, already tangling round her neck and legs, would prevent her from adopting any sort of sensible landing position. A disastrous headfirst collision with the grey concrete floor was only seconds away.

While she hung in the air a variety of thoughts raced through the minds of those present, ranging from a mild desire on the part of Mo that Elfish should not actually kill herself to a terrible fear on the part of Aran that she might.

Aran was well aware that he had deserted Elfish when she needed him. Although he would later claim that he had merely visited the cigarette machine after suffering an overpowering urge to have one last try for card number twenty, he knew that really his nerve had failed him. As Elfish flew to her doom he felt bitter regret. He loved his sister and he had to acknowledge that without her he would still be sitting depressed in his gloomy living room. Heedless of his own safety he rushed forward to catch her.

Elfish's ex-collaborators, still standing in an angry circle, had similar feelings.

Oh dear, thought Shonen, as Elfish hung at the apex of her leap.
Elfish has lied to me and deceived me. But where would I be if she had not? Stuck in a cycle of vomiting and hating myself. Now I have filled in all my sponsorship applications and my theatre group is back together. This would never have happened without Elfish. Shonen rushed forward to catch her.

Oh, no, thought Aisha, as Elfish began her descent. Elfish is going to kill herself. And Elfish has misled me cruelly about Mory coming back but there again where would I be if she had not? I was sitting in my flat, too scared to even visit the shops or even get out of bed, and now I have painted a backdrop and come to the gig and enjoyed myself and things do not seem too bad, really. Not wishing that Elfish should kill herself, Aisha rushed forward to catch her.

Hell! thought May. That idiot Elfish is going to break her stupid neck and despite the fact that she deceived me about getting me a place to live I enjoy playing guitar with her. I have never had so much fun as during this last week of rehearsing. So May also rushed forward to catch her.

Gail, a person who had suffered a great deal at Elfish's hands, was nonetheless consumed with guilt at the sight of Elfish plummeting towards disaster. After all, it was undoubtedly true that Gail and her friends would have given up entirely on the magazine had it not been for Elfish. Lies or not, it had spurred them on to action. Now they were all doing layouts and writing articles and the whole thing was almost ready to roll off the presses. Gail rushed forward to rescue Elfish.

Casaubon, cruelly disappointed in love, still hated Elfish but he did not wish to be left behind. Additionally, he had an image of himself as a large, strong, male drummer. He felt that he really should not let a small woman fall to her death in front of his eyes. When Elfish was nearing the floor, he hurled himself into action.

Seeing all this the figure of Queen Mab, resplendent on the backdrop, smiled to herself, and was satisfied. Or so Elfish thought later
anyway, from the brief glimpse she had of her as she hurtled head over heels towards the ground.

The rescuers were determined in spirit but uncoordinated in action. During the headlong rush May tripped over Aran who sprawled under Aisha. Gail, Shonen and Casaubon crashed into them and all six lay in a painful struggling heap in front of the stage.

Elfish, by luck, although she later claimed it as deliberate, had now somersaulted entirely and, like a diver who has successfully completed a complicated series of twists and turns in the air before ending up in precisely the right position to enter the water, landed safely. She came to ground on her feet, knees slightly bent, rather like an experienced parachute jumper. She was jarred by the impact, but unharmed.

Elfish gazed at the struggling mass of bodies in front of her.

“Well, thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

“You stupid bitch, Elfish,” said May, disentangling herself from the melee. She glowered at Aran, swore loudly, then proceeded to haul herself on stage where she unceremoniously plugged in her guitar and started to play. Gail followed her. After a brief hesitation Casaubon did likewise and the band lurched into their first number, a numbingly loud cover version of Ministry's “Jesus Built My Hot Rod.” Elfish, after some confusion while she unwrapped her guitar lead from round her neck, made it back on stage, planted herself in front of the microphone and began to sing.

By now the audience was in a frenzy, having witnessed the most spectacular introduction to a gig ever seen in Brixton. Already mesmerised by Elfish's jarring performance of Shakespeare they were thrilled beyond measure by her spectacular stage dive and the scramble that followed. Consequently they were more than willing to give a sympathetic listening to the band, although, being under-rehearsed, they were still not very good.

SO ELFISH GOT to call her band Queen Mab, as Cary and Lilac happily reported to John Mackie later. They themselves had not rushed forward to save her because they had assumed that, as an experienced stage diver, Elfish knew what she was doing. They continued to hide their savings in the tin in the garden, confidently assuming that the money would now be safe. Unwise, perhaps, with Elfish living next door, but they were like that.

Although Elfish seemed to be forgiven by those people she had lied to, she was not forgiven by Tula and Lizzy for her behaviour towards May. It is often the way that the friends of the victim will go on being resentful long after the victim herself has forgotten all about it. Elfish would not admit to caring either way.

She was gloriously happy after her success, so happy that on her next visit to Aran she allowed him to put her in the bath, from where she emerged clean but melancholy.

“Now I've achieved what I wanted to achieve I don't know what to do,” she said.

Aran refrained from any useless advice, knowing that Elfish would simply carry on as usual for a while, drinking and playing pool, before finding the urge to get on with things again, particularly
as she now had a band to look after. This would no doubt involve much trauma, and probably the violent abuse and sacking of all the members, and would suit Elfish fine. So he diverted her attention from her melancholy with a cheerful tale about the arrest, trial and execution of some Athenian captains, and asked her if she would be willing to encourage her band to smoke a little more. He was still on the trail of card number twenty, and time was running out.

As for Mo, he was surprised to find that he did not mind too much how things had turned out. He had to find another name for his band but the world was full of names. Every day Cody would suggest a new one, usually with some reference to Ben Jonson or some other unsuitable person. Mo rejected all of these, but something would turn up. Furthermore, he was very happy with Amnesia. They made an excellent couple, and while no one was about to give Elfish any credit for this, it could well be said that she was responsible for bringing them together.

Copyright © 2010 by Martin Millar.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Millar, Martin.

Dreams of sex and stage diving / Martin Millar.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-593-76366-4

1. Women rock musicians—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6063.I34D74 2010

823'.914—dc22

 

2009043452

 

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