Beneath the Blonde (8 page)

“Some.”

“Good. Because the pub’s about to open and I haven’t hardly started on what I’ve got to tell you.”

Saz spent the next three hours with Kevin in a smoky pub off Camden High Street. Kevin bitterly attacked Siobhan for deserting him, sacking the only old friend she had. According to Kevin, she didn’t see any of their Liverpool friends these days—”Not since she’s become the poncey blonde one. Course, we all remember when she had puppy fat and brown hair and bad skin.” He raved for about half an hour about Greg, not that there was anything particularly bad to say about Greg, in fact that was Kevin’s main problem with him—”The guy’s a bore. All he cares about is music and the band and Siobhan. In that order. Now if Siobhan was mine, I’d put her right at the top of the list.”

“Even now?”

Kevin grinned a lopsided, half drunk smile, “Yeah, even now. I’ve always fancied her. More than fancied her. Ever since we first met when we were fourteen. I’ve always
fancied girls with guts and Siobhan’s got that—in truckloads.”

“So you think Greg’s not good enough for her?”

“Oh no, he’s good enough. I know he loves her. And she loves him, it’s just she had more balls when she was single.”

“She seems pretty strong to me.”

“She is. But she used to be more. Stronger, faster.” He shook his head, “There just used to be more to Siobhan before it all became about making her look as if she was tough, instead of just letting her be her own staunch self.”

“It could just be age, couldn’t it? It is fairly normal to tone it down a bit as you get older.”

Kevin almost conceded with a slight incline of his head, “Maybe, it hasn’t slowed Alex down any.”

“Do you blame him?”

“For getting me sacked? Yeah, I do. It’s all down to him. Even in the beginning he didn’t really want me around.”

“Is it to do with Siobhan?”

Kevin frowned, “Why? What?”

“Maybe he fancies Siobhan too. If he knew you did …”

“Nah. He doesn’t fancy Siobhan. He fancies himself. He fancies themselves. The famous fucking five.” Kevin finished his pint, “Get me another one, love, and a whisky chaser.”

Saz obediently went to the bar where she also ordered a fourth diet Coke for herself and a couple of bags of crisps in an attempt to keep Kevin on the coherent side of sobriety.

He downed his whisky in one and launched back into his tale, “Alex is only interested in the band. Always has been. Can’t keep a girlfriend, doesn’t have any friends outside the band …”

“It doesn’t look as though they’re exactly best of mates inside the band either.”

“Don’t let the act fool you. They love it. All of them, but Alex most of all. They like being the chosen ones, the élite little crew. They’ll fight and argue and scream at each other,
but let some poor bugger from outside try and come in to sort things out and they’re all over him.”

“Like you?”

“Exactly like me. I was with them for seven years, then just when things are getting really good, I’m out on my ear. I got too close, see? And Alex didn’t like it and Siobhan didn’t like it either—not that she’d ever say as much—and so I was gone. Why do you think they went with a manager that doesn’t even live in the fucking country?”

“I assumed it was because Cal’s good.”

“Yeah, well, he is. But they could have found someone good in England too. It’s easier for them that way, they stick together and get to keep all the outsiders out. I worked for them—with them—for all that time and I still never got to be an insider. There’s just Beneath The Blonde and the rest of us. I mean, they’re doing bloody well and the only real staff they have is Alex’s sister—how’s that for keeping it in the family? Everyone else is just hired in for the current gig or tour or whatever or comes from the record company. They wouldn’t give you the time of day if the management didn’t force them to talk to outsiders occasionally for the publicity and all. It’s sick, I reckon. Five grown people all living in each other’s pockets like that. What they need is someone to get in there and shake things up a bit”.

Kevin was just getting into the stride of his rant when Beneath The Blonde’s first major hit came on the juke box. “Oh, fuck this. I’m out of here. I can’t listen to this shit.”

He downed the rest of his pint and struggled up from the low table, looking down at Saz, eyes bleary with alcohol and reminiscence, “Ok sweetheart, I’m off. Now how much are you getting paid for this article?”

Saz, lost in thought about Kevin’s fury at the band, didn’t quite understand his question, “I’m sorry?”

“My fee, love. What am I getting? There’s no pension scheme for sacked roadies, you know.”

“Oh yeah, sure.” Saz reached for her coat and fumbled in her pockets, “Um, fifty quid do you? I’m freelance. I haven’t exactly been commissioned for the piece yet.”

Kevin took the proffered cash and stuffed it in his back pocket. “That’s cool. We’re all doing what we can.”

He turned to leave the pub, calling over his shoulder as he went, “Give my love to Siobhan if you see her.”

Saz thought she probably wouldn’t bother. But she would keep an eye on Kev.

Saz returned to the office late that afternoon determined to make some headway with the band. An hour after dropping her bag by the desk and doing her best to look efficient for Peta’s benefit, she went downstairs to make their coffee and managed to corner Greg in the kitchen, where she forced a conversation from him while he chopped onions, garlic and shallots for the sinus clearing soup they would eat before rehearsing that afternoon. He answered all her questions about how they had formed the band, his friendship with Alex whom he’d met one night in a pub and how Siobhan had been first his flatmate, then the band’s singer and then his lover. He told her a little about their several false starts, the time when he and Siobhan had already booked a trip to New York when the offer for their first real gig came up and about the huge fight between Alex and Siobhan when Siobhan insisted she and Greg go to New York anyway. He further explained that Siobhan’s temperament—”hot and cold running egocentricity”, as he described it—meant that even now their schedules were subject to change at a moment’s notice.

He explained, as he added the chopped vegetables to the bubbling butter in a pan, onion tears running down his cheeks, “You see, Siobhan’s just so bloody contrary. The boys couldn’t stand it at first, didn’t know how to be with it. She takes some getting used to. But as we’ve become more successful—well, I guess we’ve all just resigned ourselves to the fact that you can’t ever completely plan
anything with her around. Even our manager accepts it as artistic licence. Mind you, I reckon he’s probably more used to performers acting up than we are. Certainly Alex had never come across it until Siobhan. Alex prefers to be the only one to make a fuss, if you get what I mean.”

“What does he do?”

“Tells her off in no uncertain terms.” Greg shrugged, “Alex and Siobhan have a love-hate relationship. More hate than love at the moment.”

“They’re not getting on right now?”

“It’s always a bit fraught when we’re rehearsing—and Alex does bring out the best in her. She’ll fuck around for hours and then be brilliant just to spite him.”

“And he knows that?”

“We all know it. Even Siobhan.” Greg stirred vegetable stock into the pan, “Knowing what’s going on doesn’t stop us getting back into our roles though. It’s the family thing.”

“Band as family’s a bit of a cliché, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, but true. Siobhan knows that whenever she stays with her parents they’ll want her to go to church with them. She refuses. There’s a big fuss. Every time, regular as clockwork. It’s the same with Alex. We rehearse, she fucks around, Alex gets pissed off, they have a slanging match, she sings like an angel.”

“Couldn’t she just sing like an angel anyway?”

Greg laughed, “I don’t think it would be as much fun that way. It’s not just Alex. Siobhan gets off on her tantrums too. And we all get annoyed with her, she just gets to him the most. He also can’t stand it if she acts up outside the band, at gigs or whatever. He likes us to keep our little traumas to ourselves.”

“You make it sound like Alex is Dad.”

Greg shook his head, “No one’s in charge. Officially. Or maybe everyone is. I don’t doubt that Alex thinks he’s the boss though.”

“Doesn’t that annoy you?”

Greg grinned at Saz, “Well, I don’t want to sound too sexist here, but I just don’t think guys care about that stuff as much as girls. Like, Alex is my mate, you know, he’s a really good friend.”

“But he’s horrible to your girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I know. But um … well, it doesn’t really affect me. I just try not to get involved. As long as it doesn’t do the music any harm, Alex can think what he likes. If thinking he’s in charge makes him happy, I’m not going to tell him otherwise. I like an easy life wherever possible.”

Greg’s reference to Alex was further underlined when the man himself arrived in the kitchen, grabbed Greg by the arm, allowing him time only to place a lid over the pan, and led him to the basement door. Alex called over his shoulder to Saz, “Whatever he’s been telling you, it’s all bullshit, darling. We’re just a pitiful foursome of satellites floating around the queen bee. She’s the one who’s really in charge of it all. Only, you see, Greg is a man blinded by lust.”

At which Greg tried to protest his innocence but Alex shouted over him, “He always has been. Ever since he first laid eyes on her. Siobhan Forrester’s just a fancy pants who likes to do what she wants whenever she wants it. A right little bism, as my granny would say. If Granny hadn’t been rotting in her grave these past twenty years.”

Alex stopped, as if knowing what Greg would say next, gave him just a moment to open his mouth and then added, “And no, Gregory, that’s not what I call artistic temperament, that’s just showing off.”

He then pushed Greg out the door ahead of him and smiled sweetly at Saz, “And I do hope you don’t mind my saying, but are we really paying you to stand there and ask questions all day, or are you actually going to do some work?
‘Cos if it’s just a star-struck fan is all you are, then we can get half a dozen of them any time we like. For free. Or for fucks. Or better still, both. Off you go now. Petey’s waiting for you.”

He then flicked his hand, shooing her out of the room and Saz heard him laughing as he went down the stairs to the basement, announcing to the rest of the band, “I just saved him, lads, the lovely lezzie had him in her clutches!”

Dan and Siobhan’s loud condemnation didn’t stop the bile rising in Saz’s throat but it did prompt her to whip through her business in Peta’s office in record time and then out of the house as fast as she could.

With Peta mostly out of the office at meetings with the tour booker and PR company, Saz was able to spend all of the following day on the phone. She contacted over two hundred florists to no avail. She made contact with sixteen of the twenty-two letter writers, all sounding very sane on the phone, mostly female and mostly in the thirteen to sixteen age range. She also managed brief chats with Dan and Steve over morning coffee in the kitchen. Both were helpful and rather more friendly than Alex, but both were also a little too concerned with their own roles in the band to be paying much attention to Siobhan’s problems. Saz left them with the feeling that success had not necessarily cemented their friendship ties, particularly not now that Alex and Greg were starting to earn royalties from their songs. And while Dan and Steve acknowledged that this was fair and right and just, they couldn’t help comparing their rather smaller bank accounts with those of their co-workers in what had started out as a collective endeavour and was now becoming much more of a financial oligarchy.

After a couple of hours of phone calling for Peta so she could look like she wasn’t entirely avoiding all office work, Saz enjoyed a more successful post-lunch conversation with Dan, getting what else she could on the genesis of Beneath The Blonde, although she felt no closer to finding anyone who might be considered a threat. So far her only suspects were Alex, for no good reason other than that, from what everyone said about him, he might enjoy upsetting Siobhan even more than usual, or the disgruntled Kevin, who didn’t look like he could get the cash together for a bunch of daisies, let alone huge bunches of yellow roses. From Dan she learned that the New York trip wasn’t the only time Siobhan had disturbed the schedule for the rest of the band. He told her about the several other occasions on which Siobhan had changed their plans at a moment’s notice. “There were the two surprise trips she arranged for Greg. Once to Casablanca after we’d all been watching the bloody movie on late TV and she just got it into her head that Greg would simply love it and the other time to Rio.”

“Why Rio?”

“She was doing another of her ‘I’m more Catholic than Madonna’ trips and was suddenly seized with a passionate desire to go and see that big Jesus on the hill.”

“Must have pissed you all off?”

“To say the least. It’s not only the dropping everything just because Siobhan wants us too—sure, that’s annoying, but a few days off every now and then isn’t that much of a hardship. It’s that it never really is only a few days, there’s all the aftermath too. Every time they go anywhere we usually lose at least a week because one of them comes back with a stomach upset or a cold or some new and exciting viral infection. And then Greg and Siobhan can’t just be sick by themselves, one of them always has to take time off to look after the other. That’s love, I guess.”

“They’re prone to illness?”

“Not Siobhan especially. But Greg’s a bit pathetic, he’ll catch any cold going.”

These incidents of Siobhan’s unreliability, while doing little to flesh out Saz’s suspect list, actually made for good stories, particularly as Dan tended to act them out, impersonating Greg hobbling through arrivals at Heathrow and Siobhan dramatically throwing herself into the backs of cabs, demanding he be taken home via their specialist homeopath.

Before she left the office that evening, Saz cornered Siobhan, fresh from her second workout of the day and tried again to get a little information on her past. This time Siobhan was more amenable, cheerfully recounting every difficult friend she’d had as an adult—although Saz noted she didn’t mention Kevin once and certainly didn’t seem to view any of her band relationships as difficult. But she professed to remember virtually nothing about her schooldays. As she told Saz over her second lemon vodka, “I loved my childhood. Well, I loved my family but I hated every bloody minute of my school life. Nuns.” She said it as if the one syllable explained everything. “I forgot it all as soon as I could, and what I didn’t forget I wiped out in a coming-to-London haze of alcohol and cheap speed.” She grinned, “And a few more exciting drugs as soon as we could afford them.”