Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving (8 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.”

“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.”

[ STAGE DIVING WITH ELFISH ]

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.