The Day Before Tomorrow (24 page)

‘B-But …  I’m not a muse,’ she said. 

Pestilence looked keenly at her.  ‘No, I see now, that you are not,’ he said.  ‘I was misled by the rather obvious facts that you are not human and are beautiful and of course, the fact that the songs that I see in his head are full of you.’

‘S-songs?’

‘Yes, many, many wonderful songs.   Songs that he has never played.  Such a shame, they should be brought to life.’

Denny was scarlet by this time.  ‘They’re nothing really,’ he muttered looking at his feet scuffing up dust. 

‘Indeed they are
not
nothing,’ said Pestilence heartily. ‘You should play them for us; I should very much like to hear them played.  Perhaps we could play them together, eh?  What do you say to that?’

Denny’s eyes were like saucers.  ‘Really?’ he gasped.  ‘Play – with
you
?’

Pestilence turned to the Horsemen.  ‘What do you say boys?’ he asked.  ‘We’ve got time for a quick number or two, wouldn’t you say?’

The Horsemen looked at each other and shrugged. 

‘Why not?’ was the opinion voiced by War.  ‘It’s not as if the apocalypse can start without us.’

Tamar was delighted.  The Horsemen were distracted, and they hadn’t even had to fight.

  ‘Okay,’ said Pestilence.  ‘Now let’s do the thing properly.  Where shall we put the stage?’

‘What is going on?’ 

Stiles turned in surprise.  Hecaté had arrived.

‘Where’s Jamie?’ he asked. 

‘I have no idea,’ she answered, truthfully enough, but Stiles knew better than that. He had been around magic too long to let an ingenuous statement like that go by him.  He narrowed his eyes.  ‘Okay then,’ he said shrewdly.  ‘
When
is Jamie?’

Hecaté laughed.  ‘There is no getting past you is there?’ she said.  ‘You suspicious old sod.  But the truth is, my love, I do not know.’

‘But you know something?’  He persisted. 

Hecaté shrugged elegantly, but there was steel in her tone.  ‘Let it go,’ she told him. 

Stiles left it, after all, she wasn’t a suspect to be interrogated, and he was sure he would find out more when it all started to go wrong. 

‘Wembley Stadium,’ Pestilence was saying excitedly.  ‘I always wanted to play Wembley.  Or the Garden, yeah!’

‘Covent or Madison Square?’ asked Famine dryly. 

Denny was starting to look nervous.  ‘Look – guys we don’t need …’

‘Madison of course,’ said Pestilence testily.

‘It will not be necessary,’ intoned Death sombrely to Denny’s relief.  ‘Here will be fine.’ 

His relief, however, was to be short lived as Death added.  ‘People will come.’

‘That’s true.’ said War.  ‘Remember the Gobi Desert concert of ’84?  That’s 1384,’ he added for Denny’s benefit.  Denny nodded looking bemused, as far as he was concerned, this was getting out of hand.

* * *

The stage was set up, over the muttered objections of Pestilence, in a nearby field. 

‘Don’t see why we couldn’t play the Garden,’ he moaned.  ‘Probably the only time ever that it’s not booked for something else.  Always wanted to play the Garden.  Probably be my last chance too.’

Tamar thought she saw an opening here when she overheard this.  ‘Probably?’ she snorted derisively.  ‘Don’t you just know it?  After all, after today, there won’t be a Garden. There won’t be a world even.’  To her secret delight, the effect of these words was immediate.  His face puckered, and he looked almost as if he was going to cry.  ‘Not that it matters much,’ continued Tamar, pressing her advantage ruthlessly.  ‘I mean – you won’t exist either any more, will you?  And even if you did, no more audiences – no more people.’ 

She decided to leave it there, no point going over the top. Pestilence was looking thoughtful as she walked away. 

Denny was looking as if he was going to throw up.  Fighting he had been prepared for, but not this!  This was far more terrifying.  He decided that he would rather have faced a thousand angry vampires – riding dragons – with machine guns – than this.

 People were already drifting into the field, just as Death had said they would.  They sat on the grass in front of the stage, gazing up at it wonderingly, as if they were uncertain how they had got here, and why.  Denny was more afraid of them than he had been of all the devils that Hell could spit out at him.  Why the hell, had he agreed to this?

‘To save the world,’ said Tamar, catching his thought.  ‘You didn’t think it was going to be easy, did you?’

‘Huh,’ sniffed Denny, ‘s’ all right for you to talk,
you
don’t have to get up there.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if I did,’ she retorted, twirling a lock of hair around her fingers.

‘No, I don’t suppose you would,’ said Denny.  ‘You’re a born exhibitionist.  I’m not.’

‘There’s a little bit of the exhibitionist in everyone,’ declared Tamar. 

‘Not me.’

‘You’ll be okay.’  She debated telling him to picture the audience in their underwear, but the presence of several extremely pretty girls in the front rows of the burgeoning audience put her off this idea.  Besides, that didn’t really work anyway, did it?’ 

The stage was impressive but not as impressive as the fact that not one of the audience seemed to be in the least surprised that it was there.  Pestilence looked out from behind the curtain.  ‘Hmm,’ he frowned.  ‘Coupla hundred, maybe five or six, not as impressive as usual, I must say.’  He turned petulantly to Death.  ‘If we’d played at the Garden,’ he complained.  ‘We could have been,’ he gulped, ‘
televised
.’

‘This is not a large event,’ intoned Death.  ‘It is no more than an informal get together.  Be told!’

‘It could have been great,’ whinged Pestilence.  ‘Our farewell concert, the last hurrah.  And you want to do it in a field in the middle of nowhere.  I don’t know.  Some people have no sense of occasion.’

‘I thought we were doing this for
him
,’ said War, indicating Denny, who was shivering behind an old packing crate.* ‘if this thing gets any bigger I think the poor bugger might have an aneurysm.

*[
These always turn up behind the scenes on stages.  Nobody knows why
]

‘Stage fright,’ said Pestilence dismissively.  ‘It’ll go away once he’s on stage.’

‘Got to get him on stage first,’ said Famine dubiously.

‘Leave him to me,’ said Pestilence confidently.  ‘They’ll love him.’

* * *

The lineup went like this.

On Lead Guitar/vocals – Denny Sanger.

On Rhythm guitar – Pestilence / Lazarus Moult.

On keyboards – Famine.

On the double bass (for some strange reason) – Death / The Grim Reaper

On Drums – War.

Tamar’s heart was in her mouth as Denny took the stage.  Front and centre, the spotlight shining down on his blond hair, making him look like a skinny rock ‘n roll angel.

But Denny himself suddenly relaxed, with the spotlight in his eyes he found that he couldn’t see a thing anyway; this was not as bad as he had feared.  In any case, it was too late to change his mind now.  As the inevitability of the situation dawned on him, he felt a strange calm descend on him.  He struck a chord. The band started to play, and Denny opened his mouth, and his heart, and began to sing. 

He sang about love, about frustration and longing and thwarted desire. And Tamar recognised the early stages of their relationship, when they had been kept apart by circumstance. Yet this was no sappy “lurve song”, it had a rocking beat and it had soul.  The audience was transfixed. It was an incredible song and Denny’s voice was ardently compelling. 

Tamar wept.  ‘He’s singing my heart,’ she told Stiles.  Although, she was later to deny having said any such sentimental nonsense. 

Stiles just smiled and said.  ‘Well of course he is, didn’t you know?’

He then sang another song, this time about his dreams of their being together. It was a vivid portrayal of an apparently unattainable fantasy made real in his head.

The audience was rapt as Denny sang next, with the voice of angels, about the fulfillment of his love and the fear of losing it when the world was torn apart.  Behind him, War wiped away a surreptitious tear.

‘Damn me, he’s good,’ muttered Pestilence.

Tamar was in bits.  ‘I never knew,’ she said, ‘I never knew he had all this inside.’

He was singing about his determination never to be parted from her, not by death or the sweeping away of worlds.  He wished her to be strong, he would find her again.  He hoped she would be strong enough to survive without him until he did.

‘I didn’t know he thought like this,’ said Stiles. 

Nobody was listening to him.  Cindy was gazing at the stage in girlish adulation, and the dwarfs were all sniffing into their beards and trying to hide this fact from the other dwarfs.  Hecaté was smiling to herself.  She had known.

Tamar had not though; Denny had somehow kept this part of himself rigorously hidden from her.  She thought she understood why, as the tears fell fast down her face.  Hadn’t she done the same thing, in her way?  ‘I mean,’ she thought, ‘I knew he felt this way, sort of knew anyway.  I knew he cared, but I didn’t know…  I didn’t know… about
this
!  I didn’t know he had thought about it so much, that he could express it this way.  No,’ she admitted to herself, ‘I didn’t know about all this, all these feelings, I had no idea that he felt … felt the same as
me
.’

‘And to think,’ muttered Stiles.  ‘I thought all his songs were crap.’

The audience were going wild. Some girls were screaming, not all of them for Denny, it has to be admitted, there are always one or two who prefer the sweaty drummer or the moth eaten rhythm guitarist just to prove their individuality.  There was a tentative attempt at underwear throwing, which, fortunately, didn’t catch on.  If any fool girl had thrown her knickers at Denny at that moment, Tamar would probably have eviscerated her.

Denny sang.  He had finally opened his heart, and now it was bleeding all over the stage, it was a relief in a way.  Now that he had started, he did not want to stop.  Which was okay with the audience, but the Horsemen were getting tired and Tamar did not think she could take much more. 

  And then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over.  Death waved a bony hand in a gesture of dismissal and there was suddenly a field full bewildered people all wondering what the hell they were doing there when they had jobs to go to, or kids to look after or exams to take etc.

Denny blinked, the field was emptying rapidly. Within a few minutes everyone had gone, except the Horsemen, Tamar, Cindy, Stiles, Hecaté and a crowd of embarrassed looking dwarfs. 

‘You was crying, I seen you.’

‘Was not, you was.’ 

‘Huh, I’d like to see me.’

‘Well, you should have been standing where I was then.’ 

This was Monty Python level satire for a dwarf, and his antagonist was temporarily stumped.

Denny stumbled off the stage which then vanished.  ‘W-what happened?’

Tamar stared.  ‘You don’t remember?’

‘You were singing mate,’ said Stiles. 

‘I know that,’ said Denny.  ‘Why, was sort of what I was getting at.’

The Horsemen bustled towards them. 

‘Well, that’s that,’ said Death ponderously.

Pestilence took Denny by the hand before Denny could stop him.  ‘Wonderful show man, terrific, been a pleasure.  Oh sorry about that,’ he added, seeing Denny wiping his hand on his trousers, with a look of extreme distaste (And this is Denny, we’re talking about, the man who would turn his skin inside out in order to get another day out of it before washing, were the thing feasible.  It makes you wonder what Pestilence had on his hands.  Probably better not to speculate.)

‘That is THAT,’ repeated Death ominously.  ‘We must ride out now.’

The other Horsemen looked at each other uneasily. Pestilence stroked his chin. War stroked his beard. Famine kneaded his doughy cheeks.  All looked thoughtful. 

It was War who spoke up.  ‘Well, now,’ he began uncertainly.  ‘What if, and I only say if, sort of as a suggestion you understand?  And not as any kind of … Ahem.  Well, what I mean is, suppose we, and I’m just throwing this into the air you might say, to see where it lands, and not, as it were …’

‘Oh spit it out man!’ snapped Pestilence.

‘Well, then,’ resumed War with an angry look at Pestilence.  ‘Suppose that we, instead of riding out, suppose we er – didn’t.’ 

Tamar gasped. 
Yes
!

‘Didn’t what?’ said Death.

‘Um, ride out,’ said War in a small voice, then hid himself behind Famine, who could have concealed a killer whale with ease. 

‘I see,’ said Death with what all recognised as a forced calm.  ‘And do you all feel like this?’ he addressed the Horsemen.

‘No, No, well, yes, but …’

‘Well. The thing is …’

‘Um…’

Death held up his hand.  ‘Am I to understand then,’ he said in that sarcastic manner beloved of certain head teachers, ‘that my Horsemen have decided, after thousands of years of waiting and preparation, of doing their duty and making ready for the fulfillment of their sacred obligation, that now, on the eve of our finest hour, you have decided
not
to ride out?  Is that it?’

The Horsemen quailed. 

‘Oh God,’ thought Tamar, ‘they’re going to give in, they’re afraid of him.’ 

‘Well, yeah,’ said Pestilence.  ‘I suppose that’s pretty much it, yeah.’  He added this last “yeah” with a certain air of hopeless defiance.

‘I see,’ said Death again, steepling his fingers threateningly. 

Pestilence took up position behind Famine.  

There was an ominous silence and then Death asked the one word question that was on everybody’s mind.  ‘Why?’

‘Well, see, it’s hard to explain,’ said War. 

‘Try,’ said Death wryly.  ‘Humour me.’

‘We don’t want it all to end,’ said Pestilence.  ‘No more music,’ he glanced at Denny who smiled.

‘No more food,’ added Famine dolefully.

‘No more War,’

‘No more lovely diseases,’ said Pestilence, ‘and I was just coming up with a lovely line in blotches and boils too.’  He sighed.  ‘Nothing lethal,’ he added hurriedly, seeing Denny’s face and realising that this argument was unlikely to win him much support, ‘just disfiguring.’  This was better, but not much.