Finding Monsieur Right (2010) (25 page)

In the course of the following months this dream would recur many times, with subtle variations, and not necessarily after a large dish of
fruits de mer
. So perhaps it wasn't the seafood after all.

21 Isabelle

At the Dungeon, The Coven's post-gig post-mortem was not going well.

'Look, you guys,' Legend said gravely. 'It's like we're not communicating on stage. Maybe some of us are losing sight of their commitment to the band. Anything you'd like to say, Ivy?'

Everybody looked at the drummer, whose face now matched the beetroot shade of her hair.

Legend stared at her challengingly, then shrugged. 'OK, fine. Well, if you all want to know, in the car on our way home after the last gig, she told me she'd rather work a checkout in a supermarket all her life because it would be more fulfilling than being in the band.'

Ivy stamped her foot - there was a silvery whisper of tiny cymbals.

'I was just sounding off! You have no idea what it's like being the drummer. I'm sick of being taken for granted when I'm
carrying
the whole band!'

Belladonna made an inarticulate sound of outrage.

Legend snorted. 'One thing's for sure. It
would
help if our drummer didn't play like a dying old man with one arm.'

'You what?'

'You heard.'

Seeing Ivy's green eyes flash with anger and her knuckles tighten purposefully around her drumsticks, Karloff got up to interpose himself between his two bandmates.

'Right,' he said mildly. 'I'm putting my foot down. Stop messing about.'

'I keep saying we should do more meditation as part of band practice,' Belladonna interjected. 'We should all strive to maintain harmony, like a healing sphere of white light.'

'Ivy, mate,' Karloff went on doggedly, 'you're a great drummer and I won't have anyone say any different.'

'Maybe I've lost a bit of my edge, lately,' Ivy said quietly. 'Things have been frantic at the piercing salon.'

'And what about
your
playing, Ledge? Any comments?' Belladonna asked suddenly.

'I don't know, Bella. Do you have any? Go ahead, then. Though, on reflection, I'm not sure you're the best person to do that.'

'Why?'

'Because I have my doubts about your commitment to the scene.'

'How dare you?' Belladonna cried, drawing herself up to her full height. 'You
know
I donate some of my earnings to the Bat Conservation Trust.'

'Oooh yeah, well done,' Legend said, slow-clapping, 'but I'm not talking about that. I can't be the only one who cringes when you put on a Transylvanian accent.'

'You
know
I have Rrromanian ancestrrry.'

'You do not. Your mum and dad are from Milton Keynes.'

'Well, pardon me for actually doing research into all my past lives. If you bothered to try regression, you too might discover something interesting about yourself. Though, personally, I doubt it.'

'Ledge has a point,' Ivy said, smiling. 'You do live in fantasy land, Bella.'

'See, me, for instance,' Legend went on, 'I dreamed the other night that I eloped with Robert Smith in a golden carriage, but I know it didn't
really
happen.'

'What a cool dream,' Jules said, with a faraway look in her eyes.

'Who is Robert Smith?' Isabelle asked in an undertone.

'The singer of a band called The Cure,' Chrissie whispered back. 'Major-league goth totty. And actually,' he added meaningfully, 'he looks not unlike Karloff.'

'Since we're being so open,' Jules said, turning to Karloff. 'I have a bone to pick with you, Kazza.'

'Yeah?' Karloff said, looking both tickled and nervous.

'I checked out The Coven's website this morning to see how you're getting on with it.'

Karloff swallowed.

'You posted those sepia pictures of us, the ones we took last summer in Highgate Cemetery.'

'
Not
the ones of us striking ridiculous dramatic poses on gravestones?' Belladonna said.

Jules nodded at her. 'That's exactly what he did.'

'But those pictures are kind of nice,' Ivy said.

'I love them too,' Jules admitted. And indeed Isabelle had noticed a few of the photographs in question - including a rather unsettling close-up of a gurning Karloff - on the walls of her bedroom. 'But I thought we were going to post the other ones. The serious ones where we look dead cool and moody.'

'Oh, right,' Karloff said, crestfallen.

'It's too late now, the fans will have got completely the wrong idea.'

'Does it really matter that much, though?' Ivy asked philosophically. 'At the end of the day, we're still goths. We're scary and mean. It comes with the job title. Check your manual.'

'You're one to talk,' Belladonna said sardonically.

'Meaning?'

'Meaning you weren't always so knowledgeable about the scene.'

Ivy glared at her in silence.

'I'm referring,' Belladonna went on inexorably, 'to your closet love of
pink
.'

Furious, Ivy looked around her assembled bandmates. 'When have you ever seen me wear pink? Except perhaps as an accent or in a sarcastic fashion.'

Belladonna pursed her lips, looking at her short black fingernails.

'That's
now
, Ivy. I'm talking about
then
. Back at school.'

There was an uneasy silence during which they all cast their minds back to their early-teenage selves.

'Ivy,' Belladonna said implacably, 'when I met you you'd never even seen a silent movie. You'd never heard of
Nosferatu
, even. Your favourite film was
Pretty Woman
. I had to start your education from scratch.'

'Oh yeah?' Ivy said. '
You
had blonde highlights and stonewash jeans with stretch in them. And on the subject of education, I seem to recall
I
was the one who showed you how to backcomb properly.'

'You're just jealous because you're still a beanpole with no boobs.'

'ENOUGH!' Karloff suddenly yelled, turning his gentle voice to maximum volume. 'Right,' he murmured, acutely embarrassed now that he had everyone's attention. 'I want you all to make up, all right? All this bitching puts me in a right twilight zone.'

'Sorry, Kazza. Sorry, Ivy.'

'That's all right. I'm sorry too. Sorry, Ledge.'

'I started it. Sorry I was such a bitch.'

'And I'll post the good serious pictures on the website when I get home,' he said in a low voice, without looking directly at Jules, who smiled a little.

'
Glorious
drama, isn't it, darling?' Chrissie said as he and Isabelle headed home together, leaving The Coven to have another round of drinks before dismantling and packing up their equipment.

'Do they often argue like that?'

'Oh,
constantly
. I personally think it's how they keep the band together. I mean these people go on tour for weeks sometimes, all cooped up in a
minibus
, playing at sixth-form colleges and
shopping centres
. In the
North
,' he added, lowering his voice to an awed whisper. 'They wouldn't be able to hold it together without the odd bout of vitriolic banter.'

'I thought it was quite sweet, when Karloff said he was going to replace the pictures on the website just to please Jules.'

'Oh,
adorable
. But over-subtle, as ever. I'm beginning to think they'll
never
get it on - just to spite me.'

The next morning, Isabelle went down early to get some breakfast. She walked into the silent kitchen and put the light on. Then she screamed.

'Whoa!' Karloff said, sounding offended. 'There's no need for that. It's just me making some tea, all right?'

'Oh, yes. Sorry. It's just that ... I didn't see you there, in the dark.'

Karloff, in a black T-shirt and black boxer shorts, his hair a jet-black mess, grinned at her. 'Yeah, I kind of blend into the darkness, don't I?'

'Why didn't you put the light on?'

'Yeah, that's, like, because I've just put my white contact lens in this eye. You see?'

'Aaah, yes!' Isabelle said, reeling back slightly, 'It's very ... original.'

'I like that dead-eye look. Anyway, the light hurts my eye a bit at first when I put it in, so I like to keep things on the dark side first thing in the morning. More gentle, like.'

'Of course,' Isabelle said, reflecting on his presence and attire, observing the two mugs of tea he was holding, and drawing a conclusion that made her smile.

Karloff turned bright red. 'Anyway, right,' he stammered. 'Thing is, I'd better take these up. Before they get cold.'

'Yes. That's a good idea.'

Isabelle waited for his footsteps to recede up the stairs then made a beeline for Chrissie's room. Consumed with giggling curiosity, Chrissie and Isabelle nevertheless had to wait a good hour for Karloff to depart before they could interrogate Jules. As she made a dignified entrance into the kitchen, sporting her hairclip, they both whooped with glee.

'
What
?' Jules said icily, draping her purple dressing gown more closely around herself.

'Karloff stayed the
ni-ight
! Karloff stayed the
ni-ight
!'

'Chrissie, please.' Jules dropped two slices of bread into the toaster and came to sit next to Isabelle at the table, looking her usual impassive self. Isabelle and Chrissie stared at her eagerly, trying hard not to laugh.

Eventually, Jules cracked. Her face broke into a smile. 'Yes, he did. He stayed the night.'

'My
darling
! Oh, I'll
cry
.'

'So, how ... did it happen?' Isabelle asked tentatively.

Jules took her time collecting her toast and buttering it. Then she reached for the jar of Marmite and launched into her tale.

After last night's cathartic argument, Legend and Belladonna had gone off arm in arm to check out a new club night in Brixton. Ivy had offered to stay behind with the others but Karloff, who knew that she had to get up early the next day for a particularly intricate piercing and body modification job, convinced her to go straight home. He and Jules would be perfectly capable of packing the gear into his van.

'Yes, yes,
and ...
?' Chrissie said expectantly.

'Well, you know what Kazza's like. A bit clumsy and uncoordinated sometimes.'

'Especially around
you
, darling.'

'Maybe so.'

They had almost finished packing up and Jules, who had her back to Karloff at the time, was unaware that he was bending down with the helpful intention of picking up her bass guitar and placing it in its case. Jules had turned around to reach for her instrument, somehow tripped over the case which was no longer quite where she expected it to be and bumped her head slap bang against Karloff's.

'So
then
you were both completely zonked out and started having trippy zombie sex
right
there and then?' Chrissie said, clasping his hands together.

'
No
,' Jules said with extreme severity. She had, in actual fact, stumbled on to her knees, clutching her head in pain with one hand while groping blindly for the bass with the other. Rather than the guitar, she had encountered the hem of Karloff's straitjacket and held on to it for dear life.

'And then my hair got trapped in the strings of the bass. I blame that wax Bella used to style my hair. It clings to everything like glue.'

Jules had tried vainly to free herself, cursing loudly, until Karloff suggested that the easiest thing might be to slide her head along the length of the fret board until she got to the machine head.

'And where was the machine head, darling?'

'Kazza had it. He'd managed to sort of trap it with his thigh.'

'Yes, yes, I
see
. And what was
he
doing all this time?'

'He was, you know, encouraging me.'

Some of the orange juice he had been drinking came shooting out of Chrissie's nose. He composed himself and said, grinning, 'This sounds
just
like a position
I
've been in more times than I care to remember. Give or take a detail or two, of course.'

Jules stared at both of her housemates impassively and said slowly, 'It's not that funny.'

'No, no, of course not,' Isabelle said, trying to sober up. 'What happened then?'

Jules stared intently at her toast. 'Well, Kazza disengaged my hair very gently. He's not always clumsy, you see. Then he ... helped me to my feet. And then ... oh, you know! We drove here in the van. That's all. I'm going to make more tea,' she said, standing up. 'Does anybody want some?'

Chrissie folded his arms and smiled at her fondly. '
How
like you to keep the really romantic bit all to yourself. I shan't
pry
, Ju-Ju darling. I know when to step off.'

'Thanks,' Jules muttered.

'You see, I don't
need
to pry because I can just
tell
how it went.'

'All right, all right.' Jules switched the kettle on and, smiling almost imperceptibly to herself, looked across at Isabelle. Then her expression suddenly changed and she put her hand to her mouth. 'Oh damn, Isabelle. I'd completely forgotten ...' She sighed. 'Last night Bella said something that sort of concerns you.'

'Really? What did she say?'

'You shouldn't take it too seriously. She probably imagined the whole thing.'

'What is it?'

Jules sat down again and stirred her tea. 'Well, she said she saw Clothaire in the street.'

'When? Yesterday?' Isabelle said, confused.

'No, after Halloween. When he was staying here with you.'

'Oh yes? Where was he?'

'In Covent Garden. Bella works part-time in a health food shop around there and she was on her lunch break. And, well, there he was.'

'Of course,' Isabelle said reasonably. 'Clothaire went for a few walks on his own when I was working. He wanted to explore London.'