Dream On (10 page)

Glynis beamed widely; her eyes glazed over. She
looked at Ariel. "Could I have a packet of dry roasted peanuts, please?"

Ariel gave her the peanuts. "On the house. Ritchie,
get lost," she said. "Glynis, it's a great idea, and of course I'll be happy to
give you a donation. There's nothing like that round here."

"There!" said Glynis. "Thank you, April!"

"It's Ariel."

Glynis put her hand over her mouth and giggled. "Whoops, sorry!"

Ritchie handed his empty pint glass over the bar. "Same
again, please, April." He turned to Glynis.  "Okay, say I'm interested. If I
come along on Thursday with me bass guitar, how will you help me nurture my
creativity?" he asked.

"By providing you with the platform from which you
can display your art to our audience," Glynis said, after swallowing a mouthful
of peanuts rather abruptly, and stretching her mouth to the outer reaches of
her cheekbones once more.

"Right," said Ritchie, handing Ariel some change
for the pint she'd just poured. "Well, I've found my muse, I reckon, but I
could do with a bit of nurturing, so if I turn up you'll let me play, will you?"

Glynis put her head on one side. "We can certainly
talk about it!" she said. "What's your genre?"

Ritchie took a large gulp of his beer, and wiped
his mouth with his hand. "Hardcore Nazi death metal," he said. He started to
walk off, then looked back, over his shoulder, and winked. "See you Thursday."

"I'm sorry about that," said Ariel, as he walked
away. "He's harmless, really."

Glynis beamed at her. "Well, he's certainly
lively!" she said. "So we'll see you and your guitar at the Workshop, will we?"

"Sure," said Ariel. Why not? It wasn't the Purple
Turtle, Camden, but she wanted people to hear her songs, didn't she? "What's
the form; a little bit of poetry, some music, that sort of thing?"

"Oh, we cater for many tastes!" said Glynis. "You
know, we like to be a bit quirky, a bit different! It's always a good evening. I look forward to seeing you - bring some friends!" She looked round rather
nervously; Ritchie was now slamming his fist against the fruit machine. "Er,
everyone welcome!"

Ariel discovered why everyone was welcome when she, Dave,
Shane and Melodie turned up at the Creative Workshop Open Mic evening the
following Thursday.

She'd never been in The Welcome public house before,
and it didn't look as if anyone else had, either. There was one person in the
bar, a ruddy faced gentleman in a loudly checked jacket and a purple shirt with
wide lapels who looked, Dave said, as if he'd been there since 1975. Up the
dark, narrow staircase they found Glynis and her fellow performers packed into
a small area next to a six feet square stage. The audience consisted of about
forty people squeezed around tiny tables, balancing on stools, clapping as a
young man with a goatee beard wearing a black turtle necked jumper and dark
glasses read some free verse from a piece of crumpled paper.

"How can he see what he's reading?" Shane said. "Bet he's
making it up as he goes along!"

"Ssh!" whispered Dave.  "Have to say it sounds like it,
though."

Ariel hadn't noticed, while they were in The
Romany, that Dave and Shane were actually quite inebriated; whilst in the
company of other leather jacketed beer swillers they'd merged with the scenery,
but in this tiny room with the Creative Workshop aficionados they stuck out
like vegans at a pig roast. To make it worse, Ritchie had turned up during
Glynis's outpouring.

Now, the lady herself perched on a stool at the
front of the stage, flushed with pride from accolades after her five minute
rant in which she'd rather self-consciously called her absent ex-husband a "useless cunt", causing great mirth amongst her disciples.
Ah yes, the token usage of the 'c' word, in an educated middle-class accent,
guaranteed to provoke a response now that the 'f' word no longer shocked anyone.
 Ariel was surprised Glynis's inner goddess didn't consider the use of the slang
word for female genitalia as a form of abuse to be offensive, but who was she to
question such art?

Ariel wondered, too, if her songs were sufficiently
out there
enough for this particular audience; her lyrics were certainly
nothing like "The Sassy Monologues" from which, she'd read on the poster,
Glynis had chosen her performance for this week.  If she sang 'Grey', which
she'd written when Frankie left her, back when they were travelling and he fell
in love with Sadie the Australian, they'd probably think she was a bit of a
wimp.
Not a
strong woman.
 She thought she was, though, most of
the time.  A strong woman. She just didn't feel the need to write sassy
monologues about it.

She sang 'Grey' anyway, and 'Hey You Over There',
which was about wanting someone who didn't know you existed, and after the token
five second smattering of lukewarm applause (not enough 'cunts', she supposed) she
stepped away from the stage and headed over to her friends. As she did so, she
heard a fat bloke in a white trilby saying, "Quite sweet little songs; rather
pale, though. Shades of Dido, perhaps."

"More pseudo-Alanis Morrisette," said his
companion, a woman in a purple Beatle cap, "though nowhere near as ballsy."

"Mm," said White Trilby, "rather
ordinaire
. Glynis could probably give her some pointers; she needs to turn up the wow
levels a bit."

The 'wow' levels? Ordinaire? What the hell did he know? She
felt like going over to ask him this very thing, but, of course, she didn't. Hey,
it didn't matter if he knew nothing, though, did it? His opinion was as valid
as anyone else's. He was simply a member of the public who'd been unimpressed
by her songs.

They hadn't liked her.

The applause had been perfunctory.

She felt silly for having been a little bit excited
about the evening.

This was the first time she'd played to an audience
in months, and they'd found her instantly forgettable.

She felt silly, full stop.

Was she going to have to face up, one day, to the
fact that she just might not be all that good, after all?

"Come on," she said to Dave, who was waiting by the
door for her, "let's get out of here. Where are the others?"

"Oh, didn't you notice?" He was trying to stop himself
from laughing. "We've just officially been chucked out. Ritchie went up
to that Glynis woman and said that in his opinion her husband should have hit
her a bit harder."

"Oh,
no!
" Ariel laughed, despite the
appalling nature of Ritchie's comment, despite herself. The whole evening had
depressed the hell out of her.

"Do you want to come back to mine?" Dave asked,
taking her guitar case from her.

"Yes." She smiled up at him. Right now, there was
nothing she wanted more than to curl up inside Dave's big, strong arms. At
least Dave thought she was great, anyway.

But what if she really, really wasn't any good?
What then?

Janice showed out the last customer of the day,
observing the necessary social niceties as she did so, hoping that her tight
smile looked genuine. Well, you couldn't say,
look, how long does it take you
to drink one bloody cup of tea, and why don't you stop that monster child from
throwing bits of scone all over the floor?
You couldn't, not really,
and, alas, no-one ever took any notice of the funny-ha-ha sign on the wall that
said "Children, please keep your parents under control. Adults who misbehave will
be asked to leave." Perhaps it was too subtle for them.

She turned the sign to 'Closed' and removed the
crockery from the table, then picked up a cloth. How could one cup of tea, a
fruit scone and a Breakaway biscuit make so much damn mess?

Her head ached; she felt as though there was a
tight band stretching across her forehead, stabbing into her temples at either
side.

Janice sat down at the table, stared out of the
window at the cold, grey, wet afternoon, growing darker by the minute, and for
one horrible moment thought she was going to cry. Everything that had seemed
okay for months, years, even, had become suddenly not very okay at all.

Dave didn't want her anymore. She was sure of it. She only saw him when she asked him to come round. Before Thor he'd still been
so much a part of her and Harley's lives, but since this wretched band stuff
had started up again he didn't come round to see her late at night, or even go
home with her after a gig. He seemed really pleased to see her if she went to
see Thor play, came over and talked to her and bought her drinks, but she'd
watched him, and he was equally as pleasant to everyone. When he did turn up
at the house it was to see Harley, not her. She was pleased he still did
that,
of course she was, but they weren't a real family now.

They hadn't slept together for
weeks.

So if she didn't have Dave, what was there? Harley, of course, and her mum and her gran, but not much else. There wasn't
much spare cash around, not even with Dave's money supplementing her meagre wages,
Working Tax Credit and Child Benefit. She didn't have much of a life for
herself, just the odd night out with Carolyn, and that was usually to see Thor
playing, because Carolyn was still trying to get back into Shane's Calvin
Kleins.

Janice had thought she was moderately happy,
before, but now Dave was easing himself away from her she realised how much her
life had centred around him, for all her talk about not needing him.

MySpace still cheered her up, though; she liked
that.

Perhaps she might meet someone on there, one day;
people did, didn't they? You heard about it all the time; husbands and wives
who'd met on some internet site or other.

"You all right there, Jan?"

Jan's employer and owner of the Sunrise Café, Max
Stark, emerged from cleaning the kitchen to cash up for the day.

She turned round and smiled. "Yeah. I suppose. Just
thinking."

"Anything you want to run past me?" he asked, opening
the till and thumbing through a pile of ten pound notes. He looked up at her
and smiled. "You look troubled."

She sighed. "Nothing to tell, really. I was just
-
oh, thinking that every day is the same old same old. You know, finish up
here, collect Harley from Mum's, get home, make tea, watch telly, go to bed, get
up -  you know!"

"Yeah, I know." He looked up at her. "What about your
Dave? Is he not being much help?"

Your Dave. That, again.

Janice looked away, out of the window again. Oh
dear, the lumpy thing had appeared in her throat again. She mustn't cry, not
here. "He's not my Dave. Not now. We split, remember?"

"Yes, I know. But I thought it was just temporary. I thought you still saw each other all the time."

"We did. Not so much now."

"Oh." He took the change out of the till and
started arranging pound coins into piles of ten. "Is that a problem?"

"A bit." She looked down at her feet. Her
trainers had tomato ketchup on them.

"Has he got a new girlfriend, something like that?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

Max looked up. "Would he tell you if he had?"

Janice thought for a bit. "I think he would. I
dunno - Max - " She stopped, then, and looked away.

"What? D'you think he has, then?" Max stopped
what he was doing, came out from behind the counter and sat down opposite her.

"I don't know." She put her chin in her hand. "It's
not something I thought he'd do - I mean, we've talked about getting back
together. Recently."
Not for more than two months now, though.
"It's all my silly fault anyway, because I chucked him out, didn't I?"

"Yes, but you did that for a reason."

"Yes." It was nice sitting here, talking to Max
like this.   She didn't know why, in particular; it just made her feel safe. "I'm
scared - " she began.

"Scared?"

"Yes - you see, this girl Alison, his girlfriend before me,
she's come back. From London. That was why they split, because she
moved away. About eight years ago. I always thought she was the big
love of his life. I don't know - I'm scared that he might get back with
her, and if he does, then he won't want me and Harley anymore. Not like he
did, anyway."

"Hmm." Max frowned. "People don't usually get back
together with their first loves. I mean, I know you hear about this stuff
about people meeting their childhood sweethearts on Friends Reunited and
breaking up their marriages, but it's pretty rare; that's why you hear about it
when it happens. Has he given you any reason to think he's seeing her?"

"No, not really." Only that he was never around
anymore. And he never suggested staying the night.

"Then he probably isn't. Happen she's not interested,
anyway, if she left him in the first place. Eight years is a long time. People change, want different things."

"I suppose so." Talking to Max was making her feel
less paranoid; she hadn't mentioned it to anyone until now, just allowed it to
swirl around in the back of her mind, a silent raven lurking on the fence
outside the back door.

"I should stop worrying about it, if I were you. Getting yourself worked up about things that haven't happened yet just wears
you down!" He stood up. "You get off, sweetheart. I'll finish up in
here."

Janice looked up at him. "Oh - thanks! Are you
sure?"

He put a hand on her shoulder and for a moment she felt an
overwhelming urge to nestle against his big, broad chest.

"Yeah! I've got a meeting at six-thirty, so there's
not much point in going home first, anyway."

"A meeting? Oh - yes, I see!" She'd forgotten; Max
had told her a couple of times that he was a 'recovering alcoholic'. She
hadn't given it much thought; drink had never been a big thing in her life - she
couldn't imagine having to go to supportive meetings to stop yourself doing
it. Perhaps she ought to go to supportive meetings to stop herself wanting
Dave. "Thanks," she said.