Clovenhoof (11 page)

“It’s a strap on,” said Nerys.

“Really?” said Ben, fascinated and horrified. “Why would anyone...? I mean, these straps don’t seem long enough to go around anyone’s waist.”

“That’s because it’s meant to go on your face,” said Nerys.

Ben froze and then dropped it with a small yelp.

With so little time until their Boldmere Oak gig, they crammed in as many practices as possible. Each night, after a successful run-through of their current songs, Clovenhoof would take to his desk and pen several more. He was particularly proud of the anthemic
Lord of the Wilderness
and, when he had finished the words to
Vampire Messiah (Chalice of Blood),
he felt goosebumps across his whole body.

On the Monday, he managed to get through to the Director of Programming and Events at the Birmingham Symphony Hall to whom he outlined his proposed concert.

“Yes, madam,” he said, “I fully understand that you plan months in advance but maybe you have cancellations and the like.”

He listened carefully.

“Perfect. Well, we could step into that slot.”

There was laughter and more words on the other end of the line.

“I have no idea how much it costs to host such a concert. Perhaps you could tell me. Pluck a figure out of the air.”

He nodded.

“Okay. That seems reasonable. I’ll take it.”

He rummaged around in his desk while she spoke.

“Here,” he said, picking up a credit card. “Let me read some numbers to you.”

He nodded.

“I’m deadly serious, madam. Ticket sales and promotions? Don’t worry, I’ll deal with that.”

Once their business was concluded, Clovenhoof had a celebratory Lambrini, checked on Herbert’s progress and continued composing.

At five am, having just finished the score for the twenty-minute rock instrumental
Care Bear Torture Cycle
, he wondered if he perhaps ought to just give it a rest and go to bed for once.

The open mic evening in the upstairs room of the Boldmere Oak opened with Lennox’s brother-in-law’s Slayer tribute band, followed by a three piece band of college kids who clearly put more effort into the rock music than their studies. Ben, Nerys and Clovenhoof were on third.

Ben took to the stage and plugged in his keyboard. The drinkers in the room winced at the howl of feedback, which never quite died away. Eschewing the bondage gear, his one concession to metal-wear was a Megadeth T-shirt that his grandma had bought him for his sixteenth birthday and which still fitted him. Nerys’s outfit, which wasn’t so much suggestive as downright explicit, drew much more attention when she flung off her overcoat and picked up her maracas. Clovenhoof strode onto the miniscule stage, all leather and denim, picked up his silver axe and glared at the crowd.

The crowd glared back.

Ben found himself nervously reflecting, almost as though he was having an out-of-body experience, that they weren’t a typical heavy metal band. None of them had the trademark long hair (Nerys’s was too tidy and feminine to count) and only Clovenhoof had a true heavy metal instrument and, sure, Nerys had a certain dampish metal-girl look about her but that was totally destroyed by the maracas. Maracas? What were they thinking? She wasn’t Bez and they weren’t the Happy Mondays! If anything they looked like an unholy Latino electro-synth rock band, fronted by a man who already seen too much of life.

It was all going to go horribly wrong.

“We’re Devil Preacher,” growled Clovenhoof, a name Ben was sure he had made up off the cuff. “And this one’s called
Spineless Disciples
.”

Clovenhoof glanced at Nerys, who licked her lips nervously, shared a panicked look with Ben and then shook her maracas...

...and they played.

And it worked. It shouldn’t have worked. But it did.

They played
Spineless Disciples
and
Vampire Messiah
and
(Never Trust a) Man in a Dress
, one song rolling into the next.

They were carried along by Clovenhoof’s guitar-work and singing voice, sometimes screaming, sometimes a silvery tenor, sometimes something dark and gravelly, dredged up from the bottom of a canal. What audio landscape he couldn’t generate was filled in by Ben’s distorted keyboard work, adding breadth and depth (and, at one point, the Shipping Forecast) to the music. And through it all ran the quiet but insistent hiss and rattle of Nerys’s maracas, like the tapping of death watch beetles or the rattling of bones in their graves.

And when Clovenhoof shouted one last, ‘
Run away from the man in a dress
!’ and the final synth howl faded, the drinkers tucked their pints under their arms, clapped and even whooped a little.

“Yeah!” shouted Clovenhoof in utter jubilation, dug his hands deep into his pockets and flung dozens of freshly printed tickets out into the small audience.

“Come to our next gig!” he shouted. “Give tickets to your friends!”

“Next gig?” said Nerys but got no answer and didn’t overly care because she was suddenly being paid attention by a small knot of men who wanted to buy her drinks and play with her maracas.

Clovenhoof kept the details of their second gig from Ben and Nerys, wanting it to be a surprise. Between band practices, he made phone calls and bookings and on one long and productive afternoon took a gargantuan tour of record shops and bars to distribute free concert tickets. He was a little dismayed to discover that taxi drivers did not accept credit cards and had to ask the man to show him how cash machines worked.

On the Saturday evening, the three of them watched a dozen hairy and tattooed men pack their gear into a Pickfords truck.

“Where the hell is this gig?” said Nerys.

“You’ll see,” smiled Clovenhoof. “Here’s
our
transport.”

A white stretch limo – no, not a stretch limo, a stretch Hummer - pulled up outside the flats.

“You are kidding me,” said Ben.

“Come on,” said Clovenhoof and led them out through the grey winter drizzle, flicked an irreverent salute to the chauffeur and barrelled his companions inside.

“This is bigger than my flat,” said Ben.

“I know,” said Clovenhoof. “Onward James!” he called to the driver.

“Jeremy,” said Nerys as they pulled away.

“Yes?”

“Two things. One, why are you wearing sunglasses when there’s no sun?”

“It’s an accepted part of the rock star life style. And two?”

“Yes. There appear to be two... gentlemen of limited stature in here.”

Clovenhoof peered over the top of his shades down the neon-lit interior of the Hummer.

“Oh, that’s Mark and Graham. They’re my entourage.”

The two dwarfs waved cheerily. One of them, Graham, winked at Nerys and waggled his bushy eyebrows suggestively.

“M&Ms!” said Ben, spying a glass bowl.

“Eh?”

Ben picked them up.

“Only blue ones, I see,” he said knowingly, popping one in his mouth. “Is that one of your concert riders? Like Van Halen had?”

Clovenhoof, who had no idea what riders, Van Halen or even M&Ms were, said, “Er, yeah.”

“Just go easy on those,” he added, recalling that his efforts to attain the true rock and roll image had also involved a discreet conversation with a black-market pharmacist, one who he suspected specialised in veterinary medicine.

When they pulled up outside the Birmingham Symphony Hall, Nerys swore loudly.

“Tell me you’re joking,” she said, not sure whether she was delighted or terrified.

“It’s the big time for us now,” said Clovenhoof.

A crowd of people, Saturday night pubbers and clubbers, were pressed up around their vehicle.

Ben, who had his nose pressed into the soft furnishings mumbled something like, “I live in a world of tweed.”

“Too many M&Ms,” said Clovenhoof. “Graham. Mark. Give us a hand with the keyboardist.”

They forced their way out into the crowd and to the service doors of the symphony hall.

A sharp-looking woman with a computer tablet in her hand shook Clovenhoof’s hand.

“We expected you two hours ago, Mr Clovenhoof,” she said curtly.

“We’re here now,” he replied. “Which way’s the stage?”

The woman gave a wordless grunt of disapproval and led them on through the building.

“We’ve already let the audience in. You’ve clearly sold a lot of tickets.”

“Sold?” said Clovenhoof.

Nerys saw a blond, beautiful young man in a crisp suit step in beside Clovenhoof.

“Michael,” said Clovenhoof. “Spying on me again?”

“Heaven’s omniscience makes that assertion nonsensical,” said Michael. “I have just come to offer my support.”

“It’s too real,” said Ben dreamily as Mark and Graham steered him around an equipment trolley.

When Nerys looked up again, Michael had vanished.

“Too real,” agreed Nerys, who didn’t have the benefit of illicit drugs to keep her going.

And then she saw that the woman and the other venue staff had stopped and were waving them on with encouraging pats on the back. There was a doorway ahead of them, filled with a pink and golden glow and the sound of two thousand expectant people.

She suddenly felt like she was on the long slow haul up the first slope of a rollercoaster. Sure, the big drop was coming, sure, she wanted it to happen but not just yet...

“Not now,” she said but it was too late. They were already walking onto the open stage. A ragged, almost polite cheer rose up from the stalls and tiers of seating that ran up to the high ceiling.

Mark and Graham parked Ben in front of his keyboard, guided his hands to the keys and then exited. Graham gave her a cheeky wink from the wings and was gone.

Nerys looked beyond the footlights and could see hundreds of eyes on her, an army of T-shirts and aggressive haircuts. She adjusted her basque and picked up her maracas. She glanced across at Clovenhoof and saw a man born to go on stage. He slipped the strap of his silver guitar over his head and stepped up to the mic.

“We’re Devil Preacher,” he shouted to a faint cheer. “Let me tell you my story.”

Clovenhoof started up with the opening riff for
The Devil’s Party
, Nerys fell in with her maracas and Ben, though clearly operating on another plane of consciousness, managed to come in on the synthesiser at the right moment.

In front row seats in the upper circle, Doris pulled open a paper bag and proffered it to Betty.

“Humbug?”

“I’m listening,” said Betty petulantly but took a mint humbug anyway.

Doris squinted at the cavorting figure at the front of the stage.

“It’s all just noise, isn’t it?”

“It’s not to my tastes, I’ll admit,” said Betty. “But the tickets were free and it makes a change to the bingo.”

“It’s still just noise.”

“He’s telling a story through song.”

“Can you actually hear what he’s saying?”

Betty shrugged.

“Something about fighting unwinnable wars.”

“Codswallop then.”

“I think he’s trying to be…”

“What?”

Betty sucked on her humbug thoughtfully.

“He’s trying to be eloquent.”

The lead singer of Devil Preacher allowed no gaps between the songs, launching into each before the cheers for the previous died. He did not speak except through his lyrics. The second song, which was apparently about ‘soiled angels’ (although Betty wasn’t overly sure) described the singer’s torturous descent into a Hell of his own making.

“The keyboard player’s good,” said Betty.

“There’s something wrong with his eyes,” said Doris. “I bet he’s on those herbal cigarettes. You know the ones. Looks like a ghoul.”

“I think it’s the fashion.”

Betty tapped her orthopaedic shoes along to the music, wondering if the high-pitched whine she could hear was part of the music or just ringing in her ears.

“
Swallow my fruit, bitch
?” exclaimed Doris indignantly. “Did I hear him right?”

“I think it’s about that couple, thingy and doodah. With the wotsits.”

“Fig leaves.”

“Thank you.”

“And speaking of covering up one’s embarrassment. What’s that thing she’s wearing? Like a corset.”

“It’s called a basque.”

“It’s immoral, that’s what it is.”

“I think she’s enjoying herself with her shakers.”

“Harlot. Harpy.”

“Oh, let her have some fun.”

Doris, torn between disbelief and disgust that this music was proving so popular, made a point of getting out her knitting pattern and reading that instead of listening to the racket emanating from the stage. Nonetheless, she couldn’t prevent herself tutting at the crudity of
Virgin Whore
or the cruel, mocking lyrics of
Spineless Disciples
. And as for
Vampire Messiah (Drink my Blood)…

“It’s just childish,” said Doris.

“I think it’s quite clever,” said Betty.

An hour into the show, Doris had irritably devoured a whole bag of mint humbugs and completed fifteen rows of a woolly jumper. Meanwhile Betty, always up for new experiences, had followed the band’s journey down into a pit of hopelessness, where the illusions of civilisation were stripped away and the rotten core of received wisdom was revealed. Now (as Doris sucked furiously on her dentures and worked on the jumper’s neckline), Betty and the audience were lifted up by an optimistic shift in Devil Preacher’s music.

Night of the Morningstar
was an act of resurrection with strained synthesiser chords challenged by an upbeat tempo.
Drowning in a Lake of Fire
took this change further with some cheesy power chords and conceited lyrics that together skated close to the ludicrous but never quite passed into it.

Betty had moved on from mere toe tapping to shoulder jiggling and the occasional bout of jazz hands. It was certainly better than bingo.

“Jezebel,” muttered Doris although Betty wasn’t sure who that commented was aimed at.

Up on the stage, Ben, who was struggling to focus on much at all, came back to himself for long enough to notice that the concert was going really well. The audience were loving it and so were his band mates. Nerys was cavorting and gyrating in the spotlight like the demon-possessed, shaking her maracas with disturbing vigour. And Clovenhoof had the crowd in the palm of his hand, everyone joining in with the choruses and probably not noticing Clovenhoof’s successful use of the E flat diminished seventh chord which had proved awfully tricky in rehearsals.