Dream On (9 page)

Their first write-up!

Ritchie's brother Pete's marketing strategies seemed to be
working - his old school friend Neil Mann, now the entertainments editor on The
Fenland Chronicle (the 'muso journo', Pete called him), had accepted his
invitation to attend 'rock night' at Fennington Labour Club, where Thor had been
fourth on the bill - 'fourth out of four fucking bands, mind', as Ritchie
reminded them, though Pete had said it was best not to highlight this fact.

He had bought Neil Mann several drinks during the
course of the evening, after which, Pete assured the members of Thor, he could
hardly say anything bad about them, could he?

"Or if he does," Pete had said, "either he or you lot owe
me for six Jack and Cokes."

Dave purchased the Chronicle when it was still warm
from the press, and saved it for band practice that evening.

"Are we all sitting comfortably?" he said, opening
the paper with a flourish and scanning his eyes down the appropriate column. "Right! Here's what the man says. Ahem!" He swallowed.  "
'.....and
then I laughed my socks off when four Vikings walked out on stage, including one
with a horned helmet; I couldn't work out if they were a send up - but they were
great! They handled the covers well, and their own stuff was surprisingly
good. During the middle of a track with the predictable name of
'Valhalla', I was almost tempted to mosh! Nice one, lads - a good start to
a great evening!'"

Ritchie was not at all happy.

"Makes us look like a right load of divs," he said,
approximately once an hour. "I told you we shouldn't dress up. I'm a
fucking serious musician, not a fucking comedy act."

"Ah, hold your noise, man!" Boz said. "We stand out from
the crowd. People will remember us. And the fella says we're great. This is a good review, lads!"

"Well, I'm not putting it on the MySpace page," said
Ritchie.

Dave was pleased for more reasons than one; if Boz
considered them to be doing well he would stay, and not move off to more
lucrative jobs to subsidise his other 'bit of this and bits of that' by which
he kept a roof over his head.  And, of course, a good review like this raised
his own profile in front of Ariel, too.

Dave was hopelessly in love. He was trying not to
be, because he felt guilty about Janice, but he was. He didn't know if Ariel
felt the same; he prayed she did, but she was so elusive; she was like a
beautiful nymph who wafted in and out of his life, weaving spells around him. When she was with him, sprinkling her magic fairy dust his way, he was in
heaven. Having sex with her made him feel like the
king of the world!

Dave couldn't think about the future. Until now,
always in the back of his mind had been the assumption that his long term future
lay with Janice, safe and warm and happy and cosy, with a brother or sister for
Harley some day. Home. No more shagging around; he'd been there, done that,
and walked away with the lacy thong in his pocket. He wanted love, a meeting of
minds, a proper relationship.

Oh, but oh dear, oh dear, now he wanted that proper
relationship to be with Ariel.  Oh God, he did. They understood each other,
because they were both
musicians
. Janice had always been great at
letting him come and go as he pleased, but she didn't really understand about
his dreams. How could she?

Dave Bentley's head was filled with a whole bunch
of stuff, these days; sometimes he thought it would explode with all the
activity. There were the new songs that ran through his mind constantly, words
and chords twisting in and out of all his other thoughts - his ideas for
promoting the band, and reminiscences of times with Ariel which never failed to
send an arrow straight to his groin, so sharply, sometimes, that he would groan
out loud, in the middle of wheeling along a barrow of bricks at work, or
something. Then there was all that warm stuff about Janice and Harley that
made him feel so
guilty
that he had to tuck it safely away where it
wouldn't pop out and worry him, usually somewhere in the back of his head behind
the ideas-about-the-band section.

This frenetic brain activity often threatened to
combust when he was alone in Ritchie's flat, and he was never quite sure what
do when it did, so when that happened he mostly just opened a beer and played
his guitar.

"I like Facebook better. You get all sorts of
weirdos trying to friend you on MySpace," said Melodie, flicking her long shiny
hair over her shoulder and reaching for her wine glass. "Mind you, I get enough
of 'em on Facebook, too. Anybody would think I was fair game!"

"Something to do with the amount of chest you're
showing in your profile picture, I expect, dear," said Ariel.

Melodie gave her friend a playful slap on the arm,
managing to combine this movement with a forward cleavage-showing motion. "If you've
got it, flaunt it!" she said. "You never know when you're going to get noticed,
do you? Or who by! I mean, people like Chantelle Houghton, and that
Chanelle who was in Big Brother, the one who tried to look like Posh Spice,
they're looking at making it in America, too, so why can't I?"

"Making it doing what?" Ariel asked.

"What?" Blank expression.

"Well, what have they got to offer? What are they
going to do in order to
make
it?
Sing? Act? Write comedy sketches? Sell innovative kitchen utensils on the shopping
channels? Discover a cure for the common cold? Pole vault?"

Melodie shrugged. "I don't know. Just be
celebrities, I suppose."

Ariel put her head in her hands.

"You flaunt away, gorgeous!" said Shane, and leaned
back on his arm to get closer to Melodie, legs stretched out. "But anyway, Facebook
and all that, it ain't the same for us. We're not on MySpace so we can do all
that "how are ya hun lol xox" crap! This is business!"

"Hark at you," Ritchie said. "Like you know anything about
business."

Shane laughed. "Don't need to, mate. Whose photo
has got the most comments on our MySpace, then?" He looked up at Melodie and
winked. "It's me online presence!"

Melodie tittered.

"Oh, yes, of course, you're such a
babe,
Shane," said Ariel.  She stood up. "Anyone coming out for a ciggie?"

"Yeah, I will," Dave said, and jumped up.

Outside in the smoking shelter of The Romany it was
chilly, the sort of golden autumn day Ariel loved. Early November left over
from October, with the sun bright in the sky and russet leaves blowing around
the courtyard. She buried her chin into the huge funnel neck of her thick navy
jumper.

"I hope Jeff's going to get some heaters put in
this shelter before the winter comes," said Dave. "I can see everyone stopping
at home to drink if it's too bloody cold to sit outside the pub for a smoke."

"Yeah, that's probably why they started the smoking
ban in July, to get us used to it gradually," Ariel said. She looked up at the
sky. "I love the autumn, though. Wish I was spending it in Boston, or
somewhere. Mass, not Lincs, I mean!"

Dave laughed, and lit both their cigarettes. "Are you
working tonight?"

"Yeah. Five o'clock. I'd better make this my
last drink."

"Working on a Sunday night. That's a bit rubbish,
isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't mind. There's a quiz tonight, that's
always quite good fun."

"Perhaps I could come to it. Me and Shane and
Melodie, we could make up a team."

"Mm-mm, Melodie could answer the ones about celebrity
romances, I suppose!"

They both laughed.

"Yeah, she's a bit 'nice legs, shame about the
brain', isn't she?" said Dave. "I hadn't seen her in ages until just recently,
I'd forgotten! Is she any good at singing?"

"Oh, she can hold a tune. Just about," Ariel said,
and they grinned at each other. "You ought to bring Ritchie along tonight, too;
he'd probably be a better bet."

"Not bloody likely. We did a quiz with him a while
back and he was a nightmare; knew the answers to everything, or so he thought,
and challenged the quizmaster about all the ones he got wrong."

They both laughed again. Then Dave took her hand. "Fancy coming back to my lair for a couple of hours before you have to get ready
for work?"

Ariel smiled at him. He was looking particularly
lush that afternoon, she thought; right at that moment she couldn't think of
anything she'd like better.

"Yeah, why not?"

Dave's phone rang from the depths of the pocket of
his leather jacket. He pulled it out, looked at it, and frowned.

"Sorry, I've got to take this."

He got up and walked away from her, across the
courtyard and out into the car park. Ariel watched him. There was a lot of
frowning going on.

"Is everything okay?" she asked, when he returned.

"Yes," he said, and sat back down beside her. "This
afternoon's cancelled though, I'm afraid. That was Janice. She wants
me to go and see her grandma with her."

Ariel frowned, now. "Yeah?"

"Yes." Dave ran his fingers through his hair and
sighed. "Poor old bird's got Alzheimer's. Jan says she's been really
difficult lately, dead argumentative, and Linda - that's Jan's mum - she's
getting really stressed out with it all." He smiled at her. "She likes me, you
see. Evelyn. I make her laugh. Sort of jolly her out of her
confusion!"

Ariel took his hand and squeezed it. "That's really nice
of you. Don't worry, I understand."

Dave kissed her. "Yes. Shame, though. I'm dead
fond of the old lady, but I'd rather spend the afternoon in bed with you!" He
sighed. "Mind you, I'd rather spend the afternoon in bed with you than
practically anything! Oh, I'd better get off now, I suppose."

They stood up and walked back into the pub.

She'd been right to hold back, Ariel thought; it
was clear that Dave was still a lot more involved with and committed to Janice
and her family than even he realised.

Meanwhile, at number twenty-seven, Woodstock Close,
Greyfriars Estate, Janice went upstairs to put on her make-up and choose a nice
outfit while she waited for Dave to arrive.

Jonah and Paulus, who together made up Barred of
Stratford on Avon, had just completed their 'hilarious and irreverent' send-up
of
Hamlet, Twelfth Night
and
A Midsummer Night's Dream;
this had
been bad enough, but Glynis Tooke's monologue in which she ranted in a style
more amateur than dramatic against her violent husband was positively
excruciating. Ariel was up next; as she waited at the side of the stage she
could see Dave, Shane and Melodie laughing; oh dear, they'd started on another
round of drinks. Was she imagining it, or were certain members of the rather
earnest looking audience aiming disapproving looks their way?

She'd met Glynis Tooke on a quiet Monday night in
The Bandstand, the day after Dave had broken their 'date' (if you could call a
couple of hours of 'neath-the-duvet gymnastics such a thing) to go and see
Janice's grandmother.

Glynis had bounced in, eyes darting around, to ask
if she might display a notice to advertise her Creative Workshop 'Open Mic'
night, held every Thursday night at the 'Room in the Roof' above The Welcome
pub.

"Well, why don't you come along?" Glynis had said,
after Ariel showed interest and mentioned that she strummed a guitar herself,
once in a while. "I'll just clarify; we call it an 'open mic' night, but it's
not quite the free-for-all you see in some pubs when they put on this sort of
thing; I do like to have an idea who's coming along, then I can suggest the
order of play, as it were!" She'd taken a stool at the bar and ordered a half
pint of bitter, then, and gone on to tell Ariel about her own credentials.  After
studying drama as a mature student she'd started the workshop to 'nurture
creativity in others, help artistes find their muse, and women everywhere their
inner goddess'. She offered to critique the performances of others if
required, she said; she was keen to 'make a difference', apparently. All this
was related whilst smiling so widely that Ariel thought her face might actually
split in two, and twiddling her fingers through her artfully messy, dark curls.

Ritchie had sidled up to the bar while Glynis was
talking.

"So it's not really an 'open mic' session, at all,
then?" he said. "I mean, you can't just get up and sing a song or read a poem
you've written, without running it past you first, is that right?"

Glynis blinked, turned to look at the deliverer of
this query, and smiled even more widely. "Well, experience has taught me that
this minimal amount of censorship works in the best interests of everyone; we
don't allow anything that might be construed as sexist, racist, or homophobic."

"Right. Gotcha. So is it free to get in, like?"

 "Admission is just a pound to the public," said
Glynis, shifting on her stool,  "but we do ask everyone who attends to make a
donation to the Workshop, too."

"What for?" asked Ritchie.

Glynis looked at Ariel as if to say "who on earth
is this dreadful man?" then turned to beam at Ritchie once more. "So we can
keep the Workshop going, thus helping others to explore their potential - it's
all about expressing ourselves; for some, performing in public can be a
therapeutic remedy for feelings of negativity. It can be a truly cathartic
experience."

"Well, how will me lobbing a few of my beer vouchers your
way help you do that, then?"

Glynis took a deep breath. "We have to hire the room, pay
the barmaid, advertise, that sort of thing."

"Don't cost you nothing to advertise. You just came
in here and asked Ariel if you could stick the poster up on the notice board."