Sphinx (25 page)

Suddenly her façade of hardened indifference slipped away. I fought the impulse to hug her.

‘I’m sorry.’

Zoë flinched. ‘So, you see, we have something else in common.’ She glanced out at the rooftops before turning back towards me. ‘I met your wife once, at the squat. She told Gareth to break it off with me - she thought I was too intense, and probably too young.’

I laughed. ‘That sounds like Isabella - she was always giving him advice about his love life.’

‘It’s okay, she was right. I
am
too intense . . .’ Her voice trailed off and she indicated the smouldering bin. ‘It’s hard to find the words . . .’

‘That’s because there aren’t any.’

She nodded and, squatting down against the wall, lit a cigarette.

‘Marble’s made from seashells crushed together over millions of years, isn’t it? That’s why it has that translucency - the light of all those ancient oceans.’

‘Exactly,’ I answered, smiling. ‘And oil is made from organic matter crushed together over millions of years, and that black-gold tint is the treacly light of money shining through.’

‘But isn’t working just for money ultimately corrupting?’ Zoë persisted.

‘I’ll let you into a secret. It’s not the money but the hunt that gets me excited. Finding something I can sense is there.’

She nodded. ‘I feel that when I look at a piece of marble. I see the shape hidden in the rock, then release it by carving. ’

‘Bingo, that makes three things we have in common,’ I joked.

Zoë’s expression wavered, then settled into seriousness. ‘So what do you think happens to us when we die, when we’re crushed together over millions of years?’

I stared out over the languid summer evening; the laughter of children playing below floated up with the faint scent of mown grass. ‘We become one with the universe, nature recycling itself. It’s that simple,’ I answered finally.

‘Nothing’s simple.’ Zoë threw her cigarette away. ‘I’m eighteen, in case you’re wondering.’ She stood up. ‘She’s still here, you know.’

For a moment I thought I’d misheard. ‘Sorry?’

‘Your wife, she hasn’t left yet. She’s still here, all twisted up in your shadow.’

‘Look, I hardly know you—’

‘Oops, I’m being audacious again, sorry. Sometimes I speak out of turn. You’ll have to put up with it. Come to the gig tonight - please. Gareth really respects you. He’ll be thrilled if you are there. I wouldn’t have rung if I didn’t think the situation was serious.’

Zoë smiled; a poignant half-smile that softened the ferocity of her make-up. There was an unnerving maturity about her despite her youth, and her beauty was hard to ignore.

‘He doesn’t know you’re back or that I rang you,’ she continued. ‘Proud family, your lot - Gareth would rather die than ask for help. I’m sorry about your wife. She must have been amazing. Gareth took the news really badly.’

‘They were close.’

‘The band’s playing at The Vue. They’re on in an hour so we should get moving.’

I hesitated. I hadn’t reckoned on the possibility of actually seeing my brother sing. In fact, I’d never seen Gareth’s band play - that had been Isabella’s domain, and I’d semi-consciously avoided the gigs, a part of me terrified that he might not be as talented as I hoped. I needed to believe in his future in the way my parents had never believed in mine, which meant I needed him to be good, really good.

I glanced out over the rooftops, the urban regularity jarring after the skyline of Alexandria. The sun had begun to slip behind the horizon.

‘Come on, come with me,’ Zoë said. ‘It’s got to be better than hanging around here. But there’s no way you’re wearing that daft suit.’

The Vue was an old ballroom that someone had decided to recreate as a rock-music venue. Apart from some fluorescent ceiling hangings and a stage backdrop with a massive black ‘A’ on a red background ringed by a circle, the original decor looked relatively intact. Ornate plaster reliefs decorated the balconies and a huge crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, imaginatively strung with pink electric lights, while a strobe painted the walls in blindingly blue-white staccato flashes.

The bar, located on an upper balcony, was encircled by large booths and had a neon sign depicting Betty Boop having sex with Mickey Mouse pulsing over the counter. I pushed my way through the crowd, cradling a vodka and four pints of Guinness. By the time we’d arrived, the band were backstage preparing to go on and the bouncers wouldn’t let us see them. Zoë had guided me to the bar, pointed to where Gareth’s housemates were waiting, and told me to buy the drinks. I reached the table, self-conscious in the battered leather jacket that Gareth had left at the flat and which Zoë had forced me to wear.

I felt I’d entered some kind of Hieronymus Bosch netherworld populated by young women and men dressed in the most fantastical outfits and hairstyles. They lounged against the walls and on the chairs; a couple even appeared to be having sex on the table of one of the booths, oblivious to the incurious bystanders. Another couple sported bright pink mohawks over a foot high; the man, a good deal shorter than his girlfriend, reminded me of a bizarre peacock. His eyes were carefully outlined with black kohl and eyeshadow, while the shaved halves of his scalp either side of the stiff pink spikes glistened like a pale pancake. A torn T-shirt held together by oversized safety pins sat under a black leather jacket covered in zips and studs, and his skintight trousers were made of rubber. His girlfriend wore a leather bra - the kind of thing one might purchase from a sex shop - and a tartan miniskirt, under which the suspenders holding up her fishnet stockings were clearly visible. The two of them had a tribal grace, and the male youth particularly, with his long naked skull and aquiline features, reminded me of a pale version of some of the Nubian tribes I’d seen in central Africa. I’d never thought the English could be capable of such decorative and imaginative dressing, and for one bizarre moment I speculated whether such fashion wasn’t a brilliant fusion of colonial-era Britain and the urban dispossessed.

Gareth’s housemates were seated in one of the booths, Zoë beside them. I placed the drinks down on the table, then sat opposite. They looked as out of place as I did, I couldn’t help noting with some relish. They were a curiously eclectic group who looked like they had nothing in common except the squat they lived in - in Harlesden, a semi-industrial, unprepossessing suburb on the outskirts of north-west London. The narrow Victorian terrace was one side of a whole cul-de-sac that had been marked for demolition until Gareth and his friends had taken illegal occupancy eighteen months before. Despite my disapproval, I couldn’t help admiring the energy they had poured into repairing the place - clearing the ancient sewage drain that led under the street, emptying the back garden of litter, replacing the shattered windows.

‘Excellent, my friend - the beverages have arrived intact despite the unruly herd,’ Dennis announced.

At forty, he was an active member of the International Marxist Group and a borderline schizophrenic: a passionately literary character who, when he wasn’t reading Nietzsche, worked as a bookie. Next to him was Philippe, a short corpulent Frenchman with long hair who had come to London to escape military service, or so Gareth had told Isabella. My brother had apparently recruited the draft dodger at an anarchist meeting.

The third housemate was a diminutive thirty-year-old Irishman called Francis, with straight red hair that ran down in flat streaks to his waist. He sported a matching goatee. Never seen without his embroidered beanie, he resembled a studious garden gnome.

‘Thanks, Oliver, you’re a gentleman and it won’t be forgotten, ’ he murmured in his soft southern Irish brogue as he reached for his drink.

A tall stunning pneumatic blonde in bondage trousers and a net vest sauntered past; her pendulous breasts were clearly visible, as were her large pierced nipples. All three men paused, glasses in mid-air.

‘Would you look at that? An angel in hell and I know exactly the man to deliver her from such terrible damnation, ’ Francis said admiringly.

‘Be my guest - these punky girls look like their pussies have teeth. Me, I would have concern for my manhood,’ Philippe responded before sipping cautiously at his Guinness.

Dennis turned to Francis. ‘You don’t get it, do you? The desecration of the body is an anti-beauty statement, and yet the desecration itself becomes a fetish, then a subculture with its own individual ways of delineating beauty - so all this protest becomes self-defeating. It’s a loop. All of history is just loop after loop.’

‘Jesus, Dennis, I bet you’re fun in bed in a modernist kind of way.’ Francis swung around to me. ‘What about you, Oliver? Does that bird lift your wick or what?’

‘Francis! The man’s just become a widower - he’s not interested in getting laid,’ Dennis retorted. ‘Sorry, Oliver, my associates are emotionally insensitive at the best of times. Francis didn’t mean to be offensive.’

‘No offence taken,’ I replied, concluding that the only way I was going to survive the night was to get drunk.

‘Leave the poor bastard alone,’ Zoë ordered. ‘Can’t you see he’s in culture shock as well as acoustic.’ She turned back to me. ‘But don’t worry, the girls here won’t bite - unless you ask very, very nicely.’ She grinned wickedly.

Luckily, any further humiliation was staved off by the lights dimming. The MC came on stage and immediately the audience broke into a chorus of wolf whistles. ‘The Alienated Pilots!’ he screamed through the microphone.

Dennis rose to his feet, his face cadaverous under the fluorescent lights. ‘Well, comrades, it’s time the troops turned up for the parade,’ he announced solemnly and began making his way to the front of the stage.

We all followed - except Francis, who took the opportunity to finish off our beers.

From the back of the darkened stage came a low drum roll and then a cymbal clash. A follow spot flicked on, illuminating my brother in a pool of blue-white light. Gareth looked like a beautiful sixteenth-century Spanish carving. His bared torso was a washboard of cascading pale ribs with a bleeding heart crayoned onto his chest; his leather trousers were slung low on his hips that were ringed by a studded belt. His head was tilted back, his eyes shut. A crown of plastic barbed wire was pushed low over his forehead, pearls of fake blood rolled down over his cheekbones, and he held the microphone clasped in one hand like a sceptre. He lifted his muscular arms up as if in crucifixion. The religious references appalled me - clearly he hadn’t escaped our mother’s influence. He looked thin but not emaciated; I hoped, against all the evidence, that Zoë’s concern for him had been unwarranted.

The audience fell into awed silence. I couldn’t help thinking how proud Isabella would have been of Gareth at that moment. I almost felt her standing beside me in the dark, radiating excitement. Instinct made me turn, half expecting to see her face, but instead I found myself glancing at Zoë, who was staring at a space just above me. I looked over my shoulder, wondering what she’d seen, but there was nothing. As if in answer, she suddenly reached out and fluttered her fingers above me, almost as though she was shooing something away.

Then, her face avid with anticipation, she leaned across and whispered into my ear. ‘The trouble with your brother is that he has no continuity - he reinvents himself from moment to moment. But that’s exactly what will make him famous.’

Zoë looked like some magical sage, her kohl-rimmed eyes shimmering silver under the lights. Suddenly Gareth’s voice rang out over the crowd.

‘This is for Isabella - may you shine on for ever,’ he announced, and a great sweep of emotion rushed through me.

The next minute, he burst into low gravelly song, his body throwing itself into pose after pose: a svelte Pierrot with the stance of a bullfighter. The effect was undeniably sensual and I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to the small child I used to take walking on the Downs. ‘The Fens have shadows,’ he’d once told me. ‘But when night comes the shadows fly away and leave the Fens alone, all cold and shivery.’ I’d never forgotten the passion of his six-year-old conviction, and now there it was, up on the stage.

The chorus was a pounding cacophony of guitar chords that ignited the audience. At the front, a row of skinheads leaped up and down, their shaved skulls glistening with sweat. In a violent frenzy they pushed aside the surrounding spectators as the lights changed to a deep blood-red strobe fragmenting Gareth’s movements like time-lapse photography.