To the Devil - a Diva! (28 page)

‘Gran?' Colin got up to help her.

‘It's all right, lovey,' she said tersely. ‘I'm only going to
the lav.' She scowled at Karla again and shuffled off.

Lance grasped the nearest bottle of wine. ‘Well, you've managed to piss off nearly everyone, Karla. I can see that working with you is going to be a lot of fun.'

Her lilac eyes flashed out at him. Then: ‘By the way, did you see the outline for my first show, Lance, darling? It was appended to next week's scripts.'

‘No,' he said. ‘Too busy too look at them. Why? Should I have looked?'

She grinned broadly. ‘Don't you know? We're having an affair. I'm to be your love interest, it turns out. I'm the one who turns your character's head at last.'

Lance was choking on his Montepulciano D'Abruzzo. ‘You what?'

She nodded slowly. ‘Oh, yes. You see, the great viewing public have gone off you being gay. I can't say I blame them. So you're getting a chance to taste real woman flesh.' She laughed throatily. ‘Mine,' she added.

He groaned. ‘I knew it,' he said. ‘I knew they'd do this to me.'

‘I must say, you've never really convinced me as a gay man,' Karla said lightly. ‘I mean, look at the one you're with. That doesn't look right at all. He's just some scrawny little boy off Canal Street. He's not even all that young. What are you doing being seen with that?'

Colin was feeling weirdly removed from the scene.

Raf was laughing. ‘I don't believe it, either, Karla. I've told Colin. Everyone will laugh at the two of them.'

‘And you're obviously a man of great perspicacity,' Karla told him and Raf glowed. He glinted back at her, expertly.

Lance's voice went steely as he leant across the table. ‘I'm with Colin because I love him. Remember that, Karla? Remember what love is?'

She considered. ‘No,' she said crisply. ‘And if I did, I'd try to forget. What a waste of time.'

‘Hear, hear,' said Raf.

‘Raf,' Colin shouted. ‘Just fuck off, would you? You've caused enough damage. Stop chiming in with her.'

‘I'll ask for the bill,' said Lance. ‘I think we should all calm down.'

‘Oh, the lovers are dashing off into the night,' said Raf. ‘Tell us, Colin. What do you know about love?'

‘More than you. I know who matters. You're just smarming around Karla. She doesn't give a shit about you.'

Then, startlingly, Raf started to cry. He trembled and shook and his great big eyes were welling with tears. ‘How can you talk to me like that? It's you who's turned nasty, Colin. After everything we said downstairs …'

Lance looked sharply at Colin. ‘What were you saying downstairs?'

‘I …'

Vicki spoke up. Her voice was loud again and vehement. ‘I was there. I heard everything. Colin told Raf he loved him. And then, if I'm not mistaken, Raf sucked him off.'

There was a rigid silence that stretched out until the waiter appeared. ‘Who wants the bill?'

Karla took it swiftly and looked at Lance. ‘I think you're wrong, Lance. Quite wrong about love. I have loved. I loved your mother, you know. And I loved you. And you'll never give me credit for that, will you? You'll never believe me.'

Sally returned from downstairs. ‘What lovely toilets they've got. Oh – are we leaving? What about coffee?'

Lance tried to take the bill from Karla, but she snatched it back. ‘Coffee at my place,' he said tersely. ‘We've all got things to talk about.'

‘Walking across town at this time of night could be a big mistake,' Colin told his gran.

She gripped onto her handbag. ‘I can protect myself. I'm armed, you know.'

‘I didn't mean that. I meant, to get to Lance's flat we'll have to go right through the Village. When they see Lance with Karla it'll turn into a Mardi Gras parade.'

‘That's a thought. Should we warn them?'

But Karla and Lance were walking too far ahead. They were turning the corner into the gaudy hullabaloo of Chinatown, with Vicki and Raf clicking along at their heels. Colin was lagging back with his gran, who was out of puff. Already it had been a long night. Colin wished Lance hadn't demanded that everyone come back to his flat. He wanted some time with Lance alone. But to say what? He couldn't claim that Vicki was lying about Raf sucking him off. The silence following her revelation had been too long and dreadful. Yet he would have to do something to patch it up. Explain how Raf had tricked him and begged him. And he knew that would never wash. Lance had thrown in his hand, so winningly and wholeheartedly with Colin. He had talked about love and that meant Colin should have tried
to behave himself. But what have I promised? What have I pledged myself to? I haven't said anything yet.

He could tell how hurt Lance was, underneath all his quiet and cool.

At least Gran hadn't been there to hear the news. She'd be really ashamed of me. Especially after what she said about Karla, and how she assumes everyone uses sex like she does. Like Karla thinks everyone is as big a slag as she is. And, God, I am, thought Colin. I fell for it. I fall for it every time. Being needed. Being flattered.

He watched Lance and Karla striding past the crowds in the middle of Chinatown, strolling by the pagodas in the garden square. He wondered what they were talking about, whether they were arguing. He was just starting to enjoy the cloying, spiced aromas from the restaurants when another thought struck him.

‘What did you mean, you're ‘armed'?'

His gran winked at him. She opened her handbag and carefully produced a decorative curved blade, worked in silver.

‘Fucking hell, Gran. Put it away! What the hell's that?'

‘Something I usually keep tucked away in my knitting bag for safety's sake. You could do someone a mischief with this.'

‘Where did you get it?'

‘Ah,' she smiled. ‘Fox Soames gave it to me. Donkey's years ago. When I was a kid and staying at his house in the Ribble Valley. He knew how things stood. I never thought I'd need it, but he thought I'd want protection from the dark powers he could see clustered all around me. He knew they were in Karla. And he knew she would bring them to my door one day …'

Colin was staggered. ‘Jesus. You brought a lethal weapon out to dinner with you?'

‘Oh, I carry it around quite often. If I'm going somewhere rough, at any rate. I'm always on my guard.'

As they caught up with Raf and Vicki by the main road Colin was wondering if his gran hadn't gone a little crazy. It was possible. He didn't like the way she took all this dark arts business so seriously.

‘You'll have to watch out for your Lance,' Gran told him softly.

‘What?' He was having some difficulty hearing her over the noise of the traffic. Lance and Karla were already across, slipping quickly past Yates' wine lodge, down the street towards the Village. They were keeping their heads discreetly bent, tucked in close as they talked, evidently hoping no one would notice them. They were twinned in their furtive celebrity.

‘Lance is right, you know,' Gran told him. ‘He is the reason she's come back to Manchester. He was right to assume that. She's been sent to get him.'

‘Sent?'

‘Looking at her, I'd say she's still possessed. By someone or something. The devil himself, I bet.'

‘Gran,' Colin shook his head. ‘You make this sound like something out of one of Raf's rubbishy stories.'

The traffic slowed for them, and he helped her to cross.

‘He's the one you should be wary of, Colin,' his Gran told him. ‘That Raf. He doesn't want you to be happy. He's one of those mad, destructive people. They can seize hold of you and at first it's lovely because they're determined to be your friend. You can get swept along in that. You don't know why
you've been chosen and you're glad. But then they soon go on the turn. They get fixated on you. Then their madness comes out. All their badness. And you can't get away from them. They leach onto you and suck and suck and suck …'

Colin was feeling very uncomfortable. Raf and Vicki were only a few feet ahead of them, in a hissed conference of their own. He knew they were talking about what Raf had done with Colin, and Vicki didn't sound very happy at all.

Colin's gran patted his arm. ‘I'm telling you all of this to protect you, lovey. That's always been my job. Since your poor parents died and you came to me. I won't be here forever, you know.'

‘Don't say that, Gran.'

‘Well, you know. That's just how life is. Unless you've made a pact with Satan, of course. I have to tell you what I know about the dangerous people, the sad and crazy and obsessive people. I mean, I call it the devil, but that's because I'm a silly, superstitious old woman who grew up in a different age to you. When I talk about evil, I might as well call it sadness, despair. Lonely obsession. People trying to fill their own emptiness by seizing on to other people. Trying to take over their lives. That's what it is when the devil gets into you. Sometimes it looks like love. It's the very opposite.'

Colin knew she was right. As they shuffled past the heaving, late night crowds round the canal, surging out of Clone Zone, queuing at McTucky's, dodging the taxis on the bridge, he was thinking about how people latched onto other people. He watched Vicki's green furry arm and how she'd hooked it around Raf's slim waist. They were all moving together under the pink and orange lights of near-midnight and the tarmac was glistening underfoot. Colin watched drunk people, all dolled
up on a weekday night, striding and jostling and catching up with each other. Teased and primped, tousled and shorn, some buffed up and some letting it all hang out. Everyone trying to look their best, agleam from the bars and sparkling with wit or despondency or elated on booze and pills and company. A frothing, pulsing crowd, all glancing round at each other and all of them thinking: Recognise me. See me. Look at me in my best clothes. This is me at my very best. Me at my prime. You've got to latch onto me now, before it's too late. Catch my eye. Watch me. Wander into my orbit. Talk to me, someone. Some stranger. Come and talk to me now. Lift me out of my life and into your own.

‘Oh, look,' Gran said mildly. ‘Your two friends are having a scrap, Colin.'

‘Hm?'

Up ahead, Vicki had turned feral. She was spitting and screaming at Raf, punching and pummelling at his chest. He was trying to push her away. She yelled something that none of them could make out. The passing, promenading crowd slowed a bit to watch her and the cars had to squeal their brakes as she turned and dashed over the road, and plunged into the small civic park beyond.

Raf turned to Colin and his gran as they hurried over.

‘Has she gone doolally?' Sally asked.

‘Too right,' said Raf. ‘She reckons I've broken her heart. You'll have to help me. She's going to chuck herself into the canal.'

He pointed at the slender, silver monument at the edge of the park. It was poised on the very brink of the canal.

‘There she is, look. The silly cow's going to throw herself off the Beacon of Hope.'

Lance and Karla hadn't even noticed that the others weren't behind them. They were so keen on not being recognised, and slipping like shadows through the crowds. They needn't have bothered. Everyone was focused on their own pleasure, their own ongoing dramas.

Lance led them to the door hidden in the alley where he usually did his therapeutic bottle-smashing. The glass crunched underfoot and the air was laced with wine and piss and, strangely, lemongrass and ginger, too. ‘Charming spot,' Karla purred.

‘The back entrance,' Lance said curtly, unlocking the door.

‘That figures.'

They were, he realised, behaving like secret lovers, the way they were stealing determinedly back to his rooftop pad. The very thought made him come over queasy and he remembered again what Karla had told him about the upcoming plotline on
Menswear
. That fucking Adrian had forced them into a romance. He would have to pretend to make love to this beast of a woman on the studio floor under bright lights, for the crowing delight of millions. And, the show being
Menswear
, they would have to go further than
they would in any other show. She had managed to ensnare him. To humiliate him. He would have to be naked. She'd take hold of him, take possession of him at last.

He held the back door open for her. ‘Where are the others?' he suddenly asked.

She shrugged, impeccable in her sharp, black, mannish suit. ‘They'll catch up. I presume your Colin knows the way.'

‘You shouldn't have said what you did about him,' Lance told her. ‘He isn't anything like what you think. There's more to him than that.'

‘Is there?'

‘Yes. I've never felt like this about anyone.'

‘I wonder what your mother would have thought of him. Not much, I bet.'

‘Don't you even talk about her, Karla. I'm warning you.'

She didn't reply. She slipped up the heavily carpeted staircase and Lance pursued her, to the top floor and home again.

There wasn't that many people about in the small, dark city park. Just a few pub-goers and dossers drinking on the damp grass. Colin took hold of his gran's arm and she put on a surprising turn of speed as they hurried after Raf. He was yelling at Vicki's determined silhouette as she clambered onto the concrete base and clung to the shiplike mast of the Beacon of Hope.

Across the other side of the canal, punters at tables outside of Via Fossa were starting to take notice of her. They turned round in their aluminium chairs under the
newly-blossomed
trees and gave a cheer at the sight of her in her
green furry coat, preparing to leap into the unknown.

‘Vicki!' Raf shrieked. ‘Don't you fucking dare, lady! If you do this to me I'll never forgive you!'

‘I don't care!' she rasped. ‘You hate me! You only ever tolerated me! I'm nothing to you! Not really!'

‘Of course you're not, you silly cunt!' Raf yelled and then he amended it to: ‘I mean, of course you're not nothing to me, Vicki. You're not nothing! You are something! You are someone!'

She was peering down into the turgid sheen of the slow and mucky canal. ‘Thanks a fucking bunch! But you still don't love me! You don't!'

‘Oh, don't give me that one!' he cursed, exhausted with shouting. ‘Why does everything have to be about love?'

Vicki turned round to face them all and she looked suddenly savage and startling in the full glare of the monument's lights. ‘Because that's all there is, Raf. There's only love. And I was a frigging mong for ever wanting it from you. You haven't got any to give anyone.'

‘Just get down from there!' Raf urged her. He knew he could never dash across and grab her in time. Not in these shoes. ‘Get down before you slip!'

Vicki snarled at them all. ‘Look at you lot! You're all in love with each other! All running around after each other! What have I got, eh? What – Oh, fuck.'

She slipped then.

‘Arse over tit into the stinking canal,' was how Raf put it, later, whenever the story came up, and he had to tell it, again and again, blow by ridiculous blow. He always relished the telling of it, though. How the three of them watched,
hugging each other, horrified, on one side of the canal, and how on the other, a great wail of dismay and applause went up outside the Rembrandt and Via Fossa. Everyone dashed to see Vicki splash-land and vanish and bob up screaming and sink again and disappear from sight, sucked under the hellish recesses of the bridge.

It was a story Raf became expert in and he eventually grew to love recounting. How Vicki careened downstream, swallowing gallons of black water as she went, helter skelter the length of the Village, with a whole cheering crowd dogging her progress as she went, pointing out her sleek, black head when it popped up now and then.

And how, eventually, she twatted herself on the lock gates and was fished out by gruff and leather-clad bouncers. How she was dredged out and she was coated in poisonous weed and she was coughing her guts up. It was a story he got to tell at her wedding, when he gave her away and she went and married one of the bouncers responsible for saving her life. The bouncer was called Mandy and, in his own wedding reception speech, he touchingly explained that to him, Vicki was his very own Ophelia and as soon as he clapped eyes on her shivering, retching, greeny-black body he had known he was destined to spend the rest of his life with her. He was a dreadful-looking pig of a man who drank far too much, as Raf was fond of pointing out, but he made Vicki happy. Which was not only incredible, but exactly the kind of outcome her ludicrously melodramatic gesture had intended to net for her after all.