Chain Reaction (23 page)

Jacy has not even lapsed back into smoking pot since that whole torturous experience. Perhaps he lacked their courage, perhaps he was too afraid of death, of coming face to face with a power even greater than himself. Against all the rules, and under threat of immediate expulsion, both Darcy and Cyd made moonlit trips into town, sneaking out through the french windows to pick up the crack they craved. Jacy ached to go with them but his super-ego held him back.

They were dismissed in the end with a do-not-darken-our-doors-again warning, part of the strict discipline which is the linchpin of the therapy there. Self-discipline. Every expulsion had a salutary effect on the remaining wretched residents. Jacy, for one, felt inwardly strengthened by the experience; their ignoble departure gave him the fortitude to go on. He was being good and they were not. There were thousands on the waiting list ready to take their places.

Oh no! No!

Two men with cases and a tatty guitar. Lean, wolf-lean with skin as pale as cigarette-papers. They arrive at The Grange in the morning—filthy, long-haired disreputable-looking cases. By merely passing through the village they must have raised a few worried eyebrows. By chance Belle sees them first. They come staggering down the drive like poor Ashley arriving back from the wars to Tara and Melanie. However, Belle’s reaction to the men in the driveway is markedly different from Scarlett’s.
Snip snip snip
go her ferocious garden shears.

‘Get lost,’ says she, recognising them instantly. ‘You know you’re not to come here. I don’t want you anywhere near here, or Jacy.’ She lays down her shears and glances nervously towards the front door. Perhaps she can get them to leave before he spots them.

Heat and anger combine to itch her hair. The grass around the house is tall and unkempt, the bugs chirp from the beds of brambles and the sun sits hotly in the midday sky; ‘Ah, Belle, wonderful Belle, bells on my fingers and bells on my toes.’

‘Shut up and drop dead, Cyd,’ says Belle with her hot fists clenched.

They are laughing at her. ‘Now now! What sort of welcome is this?’

‘No welcome at all,’ snaps Belle, releasing the skirt that’s been tucked in her knickers, walking towards them with the kind of haughty look on her face she wears for her most dramatic photographs. ‘Go on! Right now! Turn round and
GO!’

‘You can tell who wears the trousers round here.’

‘Too bleedin’ right,’ says Darcy, hands in his pockets, the limp he picked up in the streets of London along with other and various unseen handicaps, many of a sexual nature, becoming more pronounced as he saunters towards her insolently. ‘Where’s Jacy?’

Belle spreads her body size like a very pink sea-going creature under attack, she would change colour, too, if she could, placing her hands on her hips and standing square with her legs planted apart. ‘Jacy, as you can plainly see, is not here.’

‘Then we’ll wait,’ says Darcy, his smile wide, his stained teeth clamped together round the bent stem of a cigarette. Circling Belle, he wanders up to the steps of The Grange, dumps his Salvation Army suitcase and sits there prepared for a long wait, elbows on his knees. ‘M’darlin’,’ he says, ‘you know you have the breasts of a virgin…’

‘Piss off,’

‘He is not a well man,’ smiles Cyd in his Liverpool accent, apologising for his friend while taking the space beside him. His long fingers start plucking at the guitar strings. He throws back his head as if to sing and calls out,
‘JACY, WHERE ARE YOU?’
sounding like a wolf lamenting.

‘I’ll call the police.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I’ll go straight in and call them now. No doubt you’ve got enough dope on you to warrant a few years inside.’

‘What the bell?
Hey, guys! What’s with you?’ Too late! Damn, damn, damn! Jacy runs down the steps of his house with his arms outstretched to greet his old buddies, garbed in his tight denim jeans and his white shirt unbuttoned to the waist. Round his neck is a moonstone pendant. ‘Hey, Jeez, I thought you two tossers were dead.’

‘They smell as if they are,’ snorts Belle. ‘Offer them a couple of quid and they’ll probably go.’

‘Gee, Jacy, you look great, man!’

‘I feel great!’ He cannot swap the compliment; even Jacy is sensitive enough not to try. ‘Hey, how are things?’

‘Things are bad, man. Real bad.’

They do the old hand greeting act, clap, clap, smack, slap slap… and it’s like some secret communication of brethren. They are back at school again, just little boys, in league with one another. Belle, watching anxiously from above, looks away, sighing heavily. Perhaps they will just have a meal and go. Perhaps they are merely passing through. But try as she might she cannot convince herself of this, she knows these losers too well of old. The next thing will be the old days… Well, they can hardly cheer themselves up by talking about life as it is today. None of them can do that.

‘Ah God, Jace, we were real, we were there,
we were it.’

Cyd rolls his sleazy eyes to the sky; the chords he strums automatically change from major to minor. ‘Jeez, the ace life, the birds, the hash, the good days…’

‘Never forget it, man, not any of it.’ Darcy slurs his words and passes wind grotesquely.

‘Not so good now, though, is it?’ interrupts Belle.

‘She’s a nasty bitch, always was. Why do you take her along?’ asks Darcy.

‘She just won’t go away,’ laughs Jacy, winking at Belle to cover his mocking disloyalty.

‘So hey, what’s the score, man? You’re still here in the old cool pad.

‘Not for long,’ snaps Belle. ‘We’ve just sold it.’

‘Ah no, whaddayamean, sold it?’

‘We are moving,’ Belle enlightens them with what dignity she can find. She passes a cool hand over her forehead and that’s not because of the heat. ‘We are moving to smaller, more sensible premises, miles away from here.’

‘Just down the road, actually,’ says Jacy to her absolute fury.

‘Smaller? Oh yeah! We believe you,’ mocks Cyd. ‘What is it this time—a castle?’

‘With a bloody great stinking moat,’ laughs Darcy. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Belle? You could operate the drawbridge—sit in the snooty gatehouse with your finger hovering over the button all day long.’

‘Oh, get lost, Darcy. Why don’t you just get lost.’

‘And when you saw us come up the road you could wrench it up, chains ’n all. Cackling like an old witch and that’d be nothing new.’ He roars with laughter at his own idiotic words.

‘With boiling oil,’ shouts Cyd, strumming more loudly now and stamping his delighted feet on the step below him.

‘At least we’d be offered the boiling oil. Hey Jacy, we come to visit an old buddy and we’re not even given a drink. That doesn’t say much for your two best mates from the good old days, does it?’

‘Oh, come in.’ Jacy makes to ruffle Cyd’s hair but pulls back just in time. Perhaps he sees something moving there; he claps him on the shoulder instead. ‘Come on, what are we doing sitting out here when there’s cupboards full of booze.’

They are drifting from one unrecoverable minute to the next. Belle clenches her teeth, she can hear her own breath rising and falling. ‘No, there isn’t,’ she tells them with a fair amount of glee. ‘I had to give what was left back to the merchants and they certainly won’t deliver again. We owe them too much money. Jacy, why don’t you tell these good ol’ boys the truth and perhaps they’ll do you a favour and leave when they know there’s nothing here for them. The merchants won’t deliver because we owe them like we owe almost everyone else around here.’ She stands at the door as if to prevent anyone crossing the threshold, because in all honesty this house is all Jacy has left and if they get inside they will defile even that, put it at risk like its owner. She wants to thump them and push them and scream at them so they leave Jacy alone. ‘That’s why we’re leaving—tell them, Jacy, tell them how it really is! The great Jacy is still slipping and on his way down, down, down, but not down to your depths, you losers, not if I can sodding well help it.’

‘Oh shut up, Belle, and get out of the way. It’s too hot out here and there’s bound to be something—’

Belle’s voice shakes with anger. ‘Yeah, Jacy, wine smuggled in by you with the money I give you to go round Safeways!’ Oh, what is happening to her hopes of fulfilment?

Indoors, in the cool of the library which is Jacy’s favourite place because he can lean right back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk, his two unsavoury friends loll on the leather Chesterfield with their shoes off, looking ridiculous dressed in rags and smoking the outrageous cigars Jacy gives them. The stench of sweat and old socks wafts from their direction, gradually overtaking the rich essences of leather and cigar.

Apparently, and pathetically, they are interested in hitting the big time again. This is their excuse for coming here today. Up until now they have always had the decency to ring first, giving Belle the opportunity of putting them off with various plausible excuses. They have never pitched up unannounced before, probably because they knew damn well they’d be turned away. But this time, before Belle can work on them seriously, Cyd announces the portentous news, unwrapping it slowly like a precious parcel long awaited. ‘It was this friend of a friend who knew this guy who was looking for old acts gone out of style. He reckons it’s the old groups the kids want to hear—they’re fed up with all the contrived stuff that’s around at the moment, this rave hype. Well, Darcy was in hospital with his leg but I went round to see him at this place in Putney, a garden party with canapés and beautiful people swilling buckets of Chardonnay.’

‘Wow. I bet they were thrilled when
you
arrived,’ scorns Belle, from the brown-buttoned, brown-leather armchair, bristling with defences designed to repel any possible inroads. Her head is propped up on a tapestry cushion which itches her skin. ‘Made their evening, I don’t think. Or p’raps they felt sorry for you, thinking you were the local tramp.’

‘So here’s this guy holding court on some kind of stone throne under this wicked arbour of roses, could’ve been Caesar, with his big white knees bulging under his Scout shorts and these young birds in flowing dresses with rings in their noses and bangles round their ankles, dead cool, with jugs of booze with mint and cucumber floating about giving you the eye.’

‘Get to the point, Cyd,’ groans Darcy, fiddling with Cyd’s guitar. ‘For God’s sake.’ He holds up his empty glass. ‘Woman!’ he calls. ‘Any more Scotch?’

‘Get it yourself,’ snaps Belle, still furious that Jacy had somehow managed to stash a ruddy great bottle of Glenfiddich in one of the desk drawers when she’d had such a raging argument with the merchant, swearing they’d never even had it. It’s wasted on these two dickheads.

‘Well, I told the bloke about us.’

‘You must have been having a good night for him to bother.’

‘Lay off, Belle,’ says Jacy with a glint of hope in his eye. ‘What did he say?’

‘He was interested—particularly in you. Said he thought you were dead or something. I told him no, you were just resting. Waiting for the right moment to make a comeback.’

‘So?’

Cyd lowers his voice. ‘So he wants us to go round there. He wants us to put something together and he’ll hear us.’

‘You’re bull-shitting,’ says Jacy, spitting out shreds of wet cigar, wiping his lips with the back of his hand but never moving his eyes off Cyd.

‘I’m not, cretin, why would I bother?’

‘What’s this guy’s name?’

‘Walter Mathews. You can read about him in any of the pop magazines of your Sunday supplements. He’s right there, man, right at the top with his finger on the button, King Midas.’

Jacy kicks back from the desk and leans his body forward over it. ‘You didn’t make out we were desperate!’

‘Nah. Course not. Anyway, I wasn’t to know that you were, was I? From what we get from Belle it’s “leave him alone, he’s OK, he doesn’t want to speak to you, he’s getting his head straightened out, go boil your own.” Even when poor old Darcy was dying there in the hospital Belle said you wouldn’t want to know… speaking for you as if she’s your full-blown wife or something.’

‘So it’s three cheers for good ol’ Walt,’ scoffs Belle, staring at Cyd with a harsh derisive pity. She wears a full-length lacy dress and granny boots, her cheeks are delicately rouged. Sitting there, slumped in her chair with her head back against the cushion she looks like the professional model she is, elegant even in her anger. ‘Jesus,
I don’t believe this!
Here you are, after all that’s gone on, taking what this sad idiot tells you to heart. Think about it, Jacy, for God’s sake. Why, oh why in this world would some talent scout with money behind him take a second look at this scum at some weird garden party… It doesn’t make sense. I mean, look at him, Jacy! Just open your dozy eyes and look at the brain-damaged fruitcake.’

‘It’s true, you bag,’ Cyd protest indignantly, his right eye twitching and jumping with irritation.

There he sits, this loser, this crack-head, this mental cripple, sounding for all the world as though he’s made an impression on some bigwig in the music world, this unshaven, scruffy, stinking drifter from the gutter who couldn’t even take a fortnight of cold turkey, this jumped-up, opinionated has-been.

‘I know you don’t like me, Belle…’

‘Too dead right.’

‘You never have, jealous
whore with your acid tongue.’

‘Jealous?’ Belle throws her head back and laughs bitterly. ‘Of what?’

His lips are drawn tight in a bloodless snarl. ‘Because Jacy needs us.’

‘Needs you?
Needs you!
Like a bullet in the head.’ She directs her venom at Darcy and Jacy. On her face is that old expression, a defensive mask, almost motherly, of kindliness, self-righteousness and patience sorely tried. ‘And have any of you given a thought to how you three are going to get any sort of act together?’

Jacy looks pained. She is aiming at the sorest, most vulnerable spot, like she always does. The last thing Belle wants is for him to take off again, not now she’s so close to taming him, tying the knot, castrating him. His voice is desperate but determined. ‘We could play around with a few old numbers, the ones that never made it. We could give them a face-lift, do some work on them. There’s a grand piano in the conservatory—’