Namedropper (4 page)

The other thing about Tommy, the least important thing to him and to the rest of us, is that he is a journalist. He is a very poor writer and has, consequently, been at the
New Musical Express
for twenty-three years. He was there when punk hit and, later, when acid house broke. Not that you'd have noticed, lost, as he was, in a desk of dexys. “Speed, man, speed. That's yer ticket. Keeps yer looking sharp. Keeps you alert, so no fucker can get one over on you,” he called after the twenty-three-year-old juniors as they headed off to make their names reviewing The Mondays in Manchester. Only moderately talented writers, they lived the raves enthusiastically and got messily luv'd up, but were careful, on the train home, to record their experiences word for word, ensuring fast promotions.

One night, around 1991, Tommy took an Ecstasy tab and, within a few hours, decided he could dig the Madchester groove after all. But the
NME
had moved on to grunge, and the star hacks were flying off to interview the movers and
shakers (rather slumpers and whingers) in Seattle and to flirt with heroin. Just enough so Cobain would like them, but not so much that they couldn't get their copy in on time. Tommy, meanwhile, was mixing his speed with his Es and writing like a demon. An illiterate, incoherent demon.

That's the story of his life: Right drugs, wrong time. Right profession, wrong decade. Right clothes, wrong body. When Ray made it big, Tommy was, like a disbelieving wife, the very last to know. Now that he does, no one could know more. That is his way of saving face. Now it is his divine right, he is the official sponsor of Ray, his appointed scribe, his court jester, and no one, not even his boss at the paper, can take that away from him. Not when Ray is so cheerfully complicit in the scam. Tommy never had a pet band before. Or he did, but they were all dead. Or they were alive, but wouldn't let him play with them. Now he has one, Ray's band, Rain, and he won't let go, like those Missouri pit bulls that keep their jaws clamped around your leg even after you've blown their brains out.

Now all Ray's roadies save him a place on the bus when they know he's coming, and when he has no reason to be there, no review to do or interview to conduct, Ray allows him to DJ for him, so he doesn't feel left out. In truth, it is ultimately less humiliating for Tommy to warm up for his idol than to interview him, as the interview usually reads something like this:

When I got home, Manny was under the sunbed. I used to use it but it made me break out. Now I aspire to the pale and interesting, Bride-of-Dracula look. I recently bought a stack of ancient fan magazines from a charity shop and cut out a picture of Elsa Lanchester—the real bride of Dracula—but I couldn't find anywhere to put it. The walls of my bedroom are barely visible for posters and magazine cuttings. They are assigned by decades. Furthest from me are prints of Gloria Swanson, Louise Brooks, and Clara Bow. By the door are glossies of Lauren Bacall, Rosalind Russell, and Cary Grant. Across from that are Marilyn, Marlon, Monty, and Mitchum. The wall nearest my bed has pictures of Albert Finney, Julie Christie, and Terence Stamp. Mod is the most modern that I
get. They keep watch on me as I sleep. Treena always asks, Wouldn't you like just one picture of Puff Daddy? But I won't even hear of it. Old people's music. The fact that Manny has enjoyed this stuff, my stuff, is far better assurance than Puff Daddy that I am still young.

I flopped on my futon and rang Ray. You have to let it ring at least ten times because his hearing is not so hot following an amp explosion last summer. Whilst I waited for him to answer, I flicked through the
NME
, pausing on a photo I knew would infuriate him.

Ray's big enemy, although they've barely met, is Dillon from Skyline. Skyline are the biggest band in Britain, even bigger than Ray. He's just one man. They are a whole band. The band have been friends since they were five—playing football together, dodging class together, and forming a band together. Skyline are huge in Europe, and about to make it in the United States. Their name is so big, they
had
to conquer America. Ray Devlin sounds like someone who should conquer part of Cambridge, or Scarborough at most.

Dillon is blond but looks like he should be dark. The
NME
photo showed him in the back of a cab, his arm around a girl with bare legs and sandals that tied all the way up her ankle. He is a walking rat with the scent of Depp. He's rodentine, but if you squint your eyes and think really kind thoughts, you can almost see a touch of Johnny Depp in him. It's only a dab of Depp and it fades the longer you have his poster on your wall.

Not that I would have a Skyline poster. Girls at school do. They are the people's choice. Satellite-television-listing magazines put Skyline on the cover, regardless of whether they
have a story inside, simply because they shift issues. Politicians court their support in an attempt to win the Yoof vote. Cabdrivers talk about them. Supermarkets pipe easy-listening versions of their hits down the aisles to encourage you to spend more. Skyline make music to sing in the pub and on the terraces. The verse usually rhymes “do you?” with “what's it to you?” except they pronounce “you” as “ya” because they're from Liverpool. And they say “la” at the end of all their sentences, as in, “What do we think of Ray Devlin? All right if you're a Southern ponce, but he can't touch us, la.” The Skyline chorus is always vaguely aspirational: “You've got to … Be true to yourself / Believe the dream / Fly higher than the stars.” It doesn't matter what. People are always grateful to be told what to do. I'm sure that's the main reason they've sold seven million albums.

Ray's music has more levels. People play the new single and say, “Will you listen to all those levels?” It's very popular with students who get their belly buttons pierced and then take the rings out when they go home to their parents. Skyline's records seem to come out of a pod marked “big sales.” Ray is steeped in The Kinks, David Bowie, The Velvet Underground. But because he's so handsome the little kids latched on too. There are never enough levels for Ray. “They just don't get it. They don't deserve to either. I wish I could stand at the counter of Our Price record store and say who could and couldn't buy my music. Not her, she's twelve. Not her, she's wearing a Skyline T-shirt. Not him, he's got dyed green hair.”

If he had it his way, Ray would not sell his records to anyone who doesn't love Woody Allen. This is Ray's thing, his
safety blanket. He's a Woody Allen freak, talks about him in every interview, thanks him on the sleeve-notes, dedicates songs to him onstage. It's the main thing I hate about Ray—he thinks if he goes on about Woody Allen, everyone will think he's a misunderstood intellectual and that he'll be able to get away with any neurotic behaviour he sees fit to fling at the record company, the fans, his friends and family, cancelling gigs, single releases, and dinner parties because he feels we all expect too much of him.

He keeps asking if I think he should send Woody some of his music and I keep saying no, all Woody likes is jazz and George Gershwin, and Ray says the new single's quite jazzy, and I just shoot him a look. His ideal woman is Mia Farrow, even though Woody has moved on. I so do not look like Mia Farrow, it's not even funny. I don't look like anyone Ray fancies, which is pretty impressive, considering he fancies everyone. Ray says amazing things like “I haven't decided whether or not I fancy Tori Amos.” Like Tori Amos is sitting there on tenterhooks, unable to work, waiting for Ray to decide.

He has never, ever made a move on me. He has had plenty of opportunities to swoop on me, in the kitchen of his flat, unchaperoned by Manny.

Four in the morning and Treena was on the doorstep, off her face. As he bustled her into the kitchen, Manny shot me a look that said, “This should not have to be your problem.” I was excited that it was my problem, that she had come to me instead of Marcus.

The multitude of drugs Treena had ingested made her eyes even more hypnotic than usual. Her wet clothes clung tight to
her long, lean body. Who could blame them? I mused sulkily. Manny left wordlessly to make up the spare bed, a Jeeves with a preference for working-class Spaniards.

Treena was rustling through the biscuit tin. “I came here,” she shrieked, “because you always have so much chocolate.”

Trust Treena to be the one person on earth whose appetite was intensified by amphetamines. “Keep your voice down, love. It's very late. People are trying to sleep.” I was trying to calm her down, a difficult enough task when she was sober. Treena had an entire Mars bar in her mouth. “Spit that out. You're going to choke. Come on, tell me what's happened.”

She slid the chunky chocolate from between her lips, cheering, “Look! I'm pooping with my mouth!”

“Oh my God, you're so beautiful and so disgusting.”

Finally Treena spat out the Mars bar. “But don't throw it out. I want to save it and eat it later.”

I dutifully wrapped up the remains in a napkin.

Suddenly Treena looked tired. “My mum kicked me out.” She picked indelicately at her delicate nose.

“Again? Oh, Treena, you're not pregnant? You promised me. You said you'd protect yourself.”

“I do!” Treena was outraged. “I make them even when they don't want to. God, you think I'm such a slut.”

“You are a slut,” I said hopelessly, in a tone usually used to say “I love you.”

“Well, maybe, but that's not what happened,” she sniffed beguilingly.

I leaned forward and stroked her lustrous, shiny hair. “What, then? What happened? Did she find your stash? Are
you going to jail? What happened? You can tell me. It's not to do with Marcus, is it? I won't mind. I only want to help.”

The sight of the wrapped Mars bar on the table convinced her and Treena began, testily, to explain.

She shrieked: “I love drugs. I love fucking!”

“Do you really, Trina?” (At this moment I wasn't convinced.)

“No.” And with that, she passed out on the sofa.

In the end Treena slept with me in my bed.

The next morning, when she should have been choking on her own vomit, she was up and about, even before Manny. She brought me a cappuccino in bed. Even though we've had the cappuccino machine for three years, I still haven't figured out how to use it.

Treena's not clever like me, but she's got it together. She knows how to cook, how to write a report on a book she hasn't read, how to give directions to a Spanish tourist. That's not to say she ever actually does any of these things, but she has the capacity to. Say a terrorist with an Eastern European accent threatened to blow up London unless Treena baked a key lime pie—she would be able to. I see the terrorist as John Malkovich and the pie as delicious.

For months I was tortured by the fear of what would happen if a terrorist, this one from an Islamic splinter organisation, forced me to eat a spider in order to save Israel. I could not do it. I simply could never eat a spider and I carried that shame inside me. My work dropped off, I cried myself to sleep at night, and I snapped at Uncle Manny when he asked me how my day was. Eventually I broke down and told him about my conundrum. He said that, were the situation ever to arise,
I was not to eat the spider because I might go into toxic shock and die. That's my motto now: “Do not eat spiders, even if it will save Israel.”

“You're fucking crazy, Veeves,” laughs Treena, when I told her about my fear on the way to school. There is no more revolting sound than that of teenage girls swearing on a crowded tube train, stuffing salt-and-vinegar crisps into their cracked mouths between “fucks.” I always imagine that that's what they do when they are really between fucks. I see them having unfulfilling, unprotected, acne sex and then rolling away from their odourous inamoratos to feast on savoury snacks, which fill the hole in their soul more successfully than the dick of an eighteen-year-old.

The problem is, I find myself lapsing increasingly into indiscriminate foul language when I'm with Treena, because I can't think of anything to say, anything she'd find interesting. She has the world's shortest attention span and capturing her interest is a very hit-and-miss thing. But if she gets an idea in her head, I have to go with it, or she gets very grumpy and threatens to stop being my friend. Like today, when she decided to count how many freckles I have on my body.

“Oh, fuck off, Treena! You're taking the piss.”

“Shut up, it's important. Oh God, Viva, look what you made me do. I've lost my count.”

“You're a fucking freak. This is too weird. I can't hold still much longer.”

“Wait, I'm nearly finished.”

I don't like being inspected that close up. If anyone ever tried to go down on me, I would have them arrested.

We were skipping class, hiding behind the curtains in the assembly hall, counting freckles, when we overheard the headmistress, Miss Hoover, talking to our idiotic English teacher, Miss Danning, about putting on a school production of
West Side Story
. You have to understand our school. It's for daughters of Tory MPs. The only black students are children of Nigerian diplomats. The idea of the girls of Griffins dressing up as Puerto Rican street brawlers was too silly. “They should put on
Flashdance
instead,” whispered Treena. We laughed until the curtain shook, then clamped our ears as the click of ill-fitting high heels became louder. I shut my eyes, which is what I always do when I'm afraid, whether I suspect there's a vampire in the bathroom, or a man following me home from school. If I'm going to die, I'd just rather not know. The curtain was ripped back and I heard Miss Hoover growl, “In my office, this instant.”