like a horse’s into a smile, her eyelashes whipped her cheeks and she clicked her heels together like Dorothy wishing her way back to Kansas.
‘You think so?’ Her voice went from its usual foghorn bass to Mariah’s fifth-octave squeak in just those three words. ‘Do you think I’ll be ready for the show next week?’
‘We’ve got another lesson before then, haven’t we?’
Idiot!
Lola flopped to the chair and searched in her bag for a cigarette. ‘So you’re saying I’m not ready.’
‘I am saying that after our next lesson you will be completely ready.’
I started making a meal of putting away my folder of notes to signify it was time for Lola to go. She offered me a Marlboro so I couldn’t resist one more lesson for today.
‘No thanks, I don’t smoke – and neither should you if you want to improve your singing, especially the breathing.’
‘Oh fuck off, Mother Teresa!’
Nothing like respect for your teacher, eh!
‘Sinatra smokes, Robert Plant smokes, Edith smoked,’ Lola smoked. ‘It didn’t do their voices any harm, did it?’
I was dying to point out the slight difference in the quality of their voices and Lola’s at her age, and the fact that Piaf died of cancer, but I thought she might beat me with the sharp end of her stiletto. Besides, Lola’s attention was fixed on the ceiling now and other voices barking through it.
‘Jesus Christ!’ In her posh-camp bass you felt every consonant and vowel of a phrase like that. ‘What the hell are they up to?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about them, they’re at it all the time, sounds like they’re tearing strips off each other, don’t it? Usually it’s at seven in the morning, although what there is to argue about at that time of day is beyond me, I tell you.’
Lola blew her smoke at the ceiling in disgust. ‘Listen, Ashley, I’m not racist but…’ Here we go, that magic phrase that always comes before a racist comment. ‘With those kind, even when one of them says “hello” to another it sounds like he’s saying: “Your mother’s a whore.”’
‘Those kind’ are Africans. I couldn’t tell you what country exactly, but I’ve lived in London long enough to know a lot of people from a lot of countries and I know they are from Africa. And there was an element of truth in what Lola said, in her sledgehammer-subtle way, but I prefer to see it in terms of music. That’s what it is – just a different song, a different style. Heavy metal may sound aggressive to your gran, but it’s a beautiful thing to a metal-head. A different language, and the culture it has evolved in is just a different style of music – each to their own, I reckon.
But when they argue like that, the bloke with his booming tone to rival Lola’s and the woman like a Rottweiler with broken glass in its throat, it’s got nothing to do with the fact that I don’t understand the language – you don’t need a translator to know that there’s venom in those words. It’s like an alarm clock, most mornings at seven o’clock – as if I need to be awake at that hour! I don’t even function before ten.
They only moved in a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps it will die down soon – they say moving’s one of the most stressful things you can do. But in that weird world between sleep and awake, where what you hear in the real world forms the soundtrack of your dreams and where what you do in your dreams is acted out on your face in the real world, that vicious arguing sets off something in me. It triggers memories. I’m sitting at home, I’m six years old perhaps, stuffing my face with Space Invaders crisps and watching cartoons on TV. Upstairs, there’s arguing: Mum and Dad are at it again. Something gets thrown, someone stumbles, and I flinch, half expecting the ceiling to collapse on top of me. I cough up the Space Invader that got caught in my throat when I jumped – it makes my eyes water. I blink away the tears and try and fill my eyes with Road Runner instead, but my eyes are still watering. And the strangest thing of all, my parents aren’t arguing in English, but some African language.
So I give up trying to sleep, pull myself out of the crater in the middle of my bed where the springs once were, and put the kettle on. But the rude awakening has left my head in chaos again. I turn on the TV and turn it up to try and drown out the arguing. Breakfast news: ‘The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs, killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of civilians. Gangs of soldiers and youths kidnapped opposition politicians, and killed members of the minority Tutsi tribe, clubbing them to death with batons, hacking them with machetes and knives, or shooting them.’
Nice.
I flick to The Big Breakfast for something lighter – at least I would flick if this bloody remote was working properly, it can’t be the batteries already. So I turn the TV over to Channel 4 myself and stand in the middle of the lounge watching Chris and Gaby campaign for Barbara Windsor to join the cast of EastEnders, waiting for the kettle to boil.
Nearly there, Ash, not long now.
I’ll have this cup of tea and then get back to bed. Got nothing on till I meet Jimmy later. ‘Old Ford Lock, London, E3 2NN.’ Gaby gives out the address if you want to write to them. Where is that? Must be over in Hackney somewhere. What a cushy job they’ve got. What have I got in for breakfast? Oh, that milk better still be good, I hate having to go out before I’ve had a bowl of porridge. Especially in this weather. April showers, feels colder than a snowy day in December when it’s this grey, this wet. Madonna swore on the David Letterman show. New bassist in the Rolling Stones. Big Breakfast news. Tom Jones is now a Doctor of the Welsh College of Music and Drama. Thunder rumbling? No, it’s the kettle boiled. ‘…umuntu…!’ African, Nigerian? Road Runner, ‘…igicucu…’ clubbed to death, gangs of youths, her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, girl or bloke? Bloke or bird? Broken glass barking dog bedspring Jimmy hugged me last time I left Ah
Ah
Ah.
Peace.
The more it hurts, the more I press the old metallic kettle to my thigh. If someone could see me now! In my boxer shorts, bent over, head resting on the kitchen work surface, the kettle between my legs as if I was having sex with it. Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose I am. I keep the kettle in place, press a little harder and I don’t care what I look like, and I wouldn’t even care, wouldn’t even know if someone was watching. I’m nowhere. In a peaceful place, where all the adverts, the news, the arguing, the laughter that I’m not in on, the chaos, is silenced. I allow the rush that fills my body to escape through my mouth in a long breathy groan. That’s the first thing I hear, just the end of it. And my breath misting up the tin with TEA engraved on it is the first thing I see. And the smell of burning flesh is the first thing I smell – it’s like chicken being barbecued in a marinade of Radox shower gel.
‘We’re trying to have a lesson down here, keep it down!’ Lola bellowed at the ceiling.
I put my hand on my thigh, my folder of notes over my hand, and pressed gently. Ouch! Still tender. Lola stuffed her fags back into her handbag and grabbed her fur coat. ‘You shouldn’t have to put up with this: you need to make a stand before they think they can get away with it,’ and she marched out of my front door and trotted up the stairs, the sound of her heels ricocheting around the concrete stairwell like the slap of a teacher’s ruler on a schoolboy’s hand.
‘Lola.’ Trying to keep up with her was a sore mission as my thigh kept chafing on my combats. ‘Leave it, it’s just the way things are round…’
She banged so hard on the door of Number 62 that she nearly fell back off her stilettos and I swear I saw her fringe move an inch down her forehead. But the moment she did it, the arguing stopped. Lola put her hands on her hips and stared down the peephole like it was a makeup mirror. I knew what Lola looked like in fish-eye-lens view from the other side of those peepholes and I had to stifle a giggle.
‘Thanks,