Gabriel's Angel Read online

  ‘You thinking of getting the band back together?’

  ‘No, well maybe, I don’t know. Where’s Bernie?’

  ‘Margate.’

  ‘Margate?’ repeated James.

  ‘He’s got a bungalow, runs a little antique shop,’ said The Roadie.

  ‘Margate?’

  ‘Last I heard.’

  As this conversation droned on Julie ignored him. She was reading an article about a woman who had had fifteen sessions of plastic surgery. Face lifted, eyes Botoxed, legs and stomach drained of unsightly fat. She’d had her breasts enlarged, the skin around her neck tightened, and something done to make her bottom look more tapered. The photographs looked as though she were walking into a strong wind. And her teeth went straight past white on their way to transparent. She looked awful. Julie touched her neck, looked up at James to see he wasn’t looking, and felt her breasts. She couldn’t remember how they felt fifteen years ago so how did she know how they’d changed? She still worked out, although not as often. They felt OK she thought.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked James.

  ‘Nothing’ she said pulling her shirt down tightly to her waist.

  James paused, shook his head, dialled a number, and said to Julie—as if she cared—that he was calling ‘his’ old guitarist.

  ‘Gary Guitar! Hey Gary. James here. James Buchan. Jimmy B. Gary... Gaz …’

  James dialled again, and at least this time Gary Guitar spoke, albeit to say: ‘Fuck off, tosser.’

  After he had hung up, James poured himself and Julie a drink and tried to think what to say to Bernie. James was perspiring. It would be a lie to say that Julie, who watched impassively from behind the magazine, pitied James. That would imply more feeling than she could muster for the bloke.

  James and Julie had lived together for nearly a year. They had met at a yoga class. James was sleeping with the teacher, Julie didn’t like the teacher, James was having one of his good patches, Julie looked good in a leotard; it was bound to happen. But that was ages ago. If Julie had been the type of woman who reflected earnestly on her past decisions, then she might have considered James to be one of those transitory relationships that had lasted longer than it should and had been ascribed more significance than it deserved simply because she had needed a place to live and he had needed rent.

  But she wasn’t much given to reflection, not about relationships anyway. Julie believed that one’s capacity to form and maintain relationships existed beyond reason, it just happened, and it was best to let that part of you take care of itself. Julie trusted her instincts: wherever she was, whenever it was, if her instinct told her to go, then she left. She didn’t always have a plan as to where she was going, but she believed that that didn’t matter. She reasoned that if whatever filled her present wasn’t pleasing her, then it was not worth building a future on. Julie had done a lot of leaving.

  ‘I know!’ shouted James, clearly chastened by Gary Guitar’s reluctance to engage. Julie jumped a little, spilling gin on the tight-faced freak in the local paper. ‘I’ll visit Bernie, see him face to face. You can’t hang up on someone who’s standing in your shop.’

  ‘No, but you can throw things at them.’

  ‘Nah,’ said James. ‘Bernie’s not the throwing type. He’s too short.’ As James picked up the phone again to get an address for Bernie, Julie made her way upstairs to her bedroom.

  That evening, Julie’s last in the cottage, they had guests over. Guests being Michael—Julie’s favourite person in the whole of Norwich—and whoever happened to be with him. James did the cooking while Julie stayed in her room—packing, hiding, wondering what she would be doing next week.

  Julie came downstairs about five minutes after hearing Michael and his date arrive. She usually made an effort to avoid the introductions, as they always brought the worst out of James and that made her irritable for the rest of the evening. James was always a little competitive around Michael, and when he brought a woman round James would often greet her with things like: ‘Good lord, you’re beautiful. Why are you with him?’ Or on one occasion: ‘Christ, you look just like Kim Wilde, and believe me I should know.’

  So she waited for the embarrassing air-kissing to stop, and by the time she came down, James, Michael and a dark-haired woman with bright red lipstick and, Julie thought, a slightly-larger-than-necessary arse, were standing staring at James’s latest acquisition—an elaborately framed poster that he had bought at a car boot sale, of a Rothko painting called “Blue and Green.” It was about the size of Belgium, and James had bought it shortly after seeing the original on the wall in the background of a TV interview with Sting. Consequently, Julie referred to it as his ‘lucky Sting poster.’

  Nobody noticed as Julie came into the room. She was heading for the gin when she heard James say, ‘I don’t know what it is about it, but sometimes I feel I could just jump right into the middle of it.

  Julie said, ‘You don’t want to do that, Jim, you’ll bang your head and fall in the fire. Think what the papers will say, “Former pop singer killed in surprise collision with crap poster.” ’

  Michael smiled and gave her a hug, being careful not to hold on for too long, then introduced her to Lipstick Girl while James wandered off to the kitchen, which was probably the room in which he was happiest. They drank gin and tonics, and James worked hard at making everyone feel good about being there. As Lipstick Girl was the outsider, she was the target for most of his charm. James was a good host: what might have first looked like showboating for the attractive stranger increasingly came over as a genuine attempt to make Lipstick Girl comfortable. He asked all the right questions: ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I teach media studies.’

  ‘Where did you meet Michael?’

  ‘At a book launch.’

  ‘Can I get you another gin?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Julie listened politely but thought that anyone who said the words “media studies” without spitting afterwards should be taken to the kitchen and put in the oven. And she didn’t like Lipstick Girl’s dress, which she thought looked like the one the girls wear in WH Smith.

  By the time dinner was ready, Lipstick Girl seemed quite relaxed in a ‘This is my fourth gin’ kind of way. James, pleased with his hosting skills, was in such a good mood he let Julie pick the CD. She opted for something by ‘My Morning Jacket,’ which was clearly perceived as taking advantage, because after three songs James replaced it with the Police’s greatest hits.

  ‘I met him recently,’ said Michael.

  ‘Who?’ asked James.

  ‘Sting.’

  ‘Really?’ said James, quite impressed. ‘Did he know who you were?’

  ‘He said he recognised me.’

  ‘Really!’ even more impressed. ‘You see the band is still kind of out there floating around in the ether, we are still lodged in the consciousness of people of a certain age.’

  ‘What band?’

  ‘Our band.’

  ‘He recognised me from “The Late Show,” not Dog in a fucking Tuba.’ Michael inadvertently screwed up his nose when he said the word Tuba. James looked embarrassed. Michael quickly added: ‘Christ, Jim, I was just the bloody bass player, maybe he’d have recognised you.’

  There was a silence, which Lipstick Girl filled by asking loudly, ‘Were you two in a band together?’

  Michael had had no clue what he was going to do when he stopped being in Dog in a Tuba, but he knew that he would rather not work for a living, and to get away with that, you had to plan ahead and be lucky. A friend of his persuaded him to write something and put him in touch with a features editor at The Guardian. They asked him to write a piece for the Saturday review about what it was like to be in a band when it finishes. They probably expected some maudlin liturgy of recrimination, name-calling, and sulking. What they got was quite a funny, lively piece about how surprised he was when flares became fashionable again and how ridiculous it feels to be playing to 2,000 Japan
ese teenagers on your thirty-second birthday.

  Other work followed, and he became quite popular, even appearing on ‘The Late Show’ a few times talking about Spanish film, some crap exhibition of Brit Art—his key line being ‘someone pins their trousers to the wall and calls it ‘Legless’ and that’s art?’—and the new series of ‘Holby City.’ He never claimed to be a proper journalist, but he took time to learn to write, reading the people who obviously did it well and figuring out what made them good. He never lied about anything, never pretended that the things he talked about were important, and always delivered what he was asked for.

  However, having made it into his forties with most of his hair, a few decent suits and two homes—a flat in central London and a cottage in Norfolk—it had finally occurred to him that he might want something a little more substantial in his life; something like a family or a cause or at least a nudging, self-defining belief system. He had begun to sleep badly; he had grown—reluctantly—a gnawing ball of self-doubt. He had tried to ignore it. He had filled the night-time hours with as much sex as he could find without feeling too sordid or seeming too desperate. He had slept with an awful lot of women. Quite recently he had slept in the same week with two women who he considered plain and more worryingly, quite dull. He didn’t know why. The second he imagined was to eliminate the thought of the first. He found himself touching her flesh softly not through tenderness, but through curiosity. Almost asking himself, what am I doing here? Consequently, he did things he perhaps shouldn’t have done. Thrown himself into the fleshy project with a fervour that might later require a restraining order from the shaken and stirred woman.

  Lipstick Girl was cute. It worried him a little that that didn’t matter to him as much as it should.

  Michael had decided he needed to spend more time out of London. It was partly to avoid the easygoing, going-nowhere circle of hack acquaintances that he enjoyed hanging out and talking rubbish with, and partly because he had decided there was no point in having a cottage in Norfolk if you never went to it. He figured if he wanted to change his life, the first thing he should do was to spend part of it in a different place.

  One of the consequences of spending time in Norfolk was seeing more of James, although that wasn’t difficult as he hadn’t seen him at all between 1989 and 1995. They met again by accident in a record shop on Oxford Street, swapped numbers, and had seen each other once every six months or so until Michael had bought the cottage. Now they saw each other every six weeks or so, usually at James’s for dinner and only, from Michael’s point of view, so he could hang out with Julie.

  Later, just after the lemon cheesecake, Julie turned to Michael and said quietly: ‘She has lovely hair.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Whatsername.’

  ‘You don’t like her, then?’

  ‘She seems perfectly nice.’

  ‘That’s a no.’ Michael always liked this bit of the evening best.

  ‘I prefer her to that American you brought last time.’

  ‘I thought you got on all right with her.’

  ‘Of course I got on with her, that’s just good manners.’ Julie said in mock wide-eyed surprise.

  ‘Or being two-faced.’

  ‘Or that. But like her? Pur-leeze! She had a bloody eating disorder, made Ally McBeal look like Bette Midler. She kept picking at her food, hardly ate a thing, and only drank white-wine spritzers. I wanted to force feed her a chunky Kit Kat.’

  Michael laughed. ‘I’d have paid to watch that.’

  James and Lipstick Girl, on the other hand, were talking cake. She loved his cheesecake, which James was milking for all it was worth. ‘I’m probably happiest in the kitchen, wouldn’t you say pet? Julie? Julie! I was just saying how I’m happiest in the kitchen.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Julie. ‘Jim does like to bake.’

  ‘Either the kitchen or the recording studio,’ lied James, who hadn’t been in his own recording studio for weeks and certainly hadn’t done any recording.

  ‘You have a recording studio?’ asked Lipstick Girl. Julie rolled her eyes.

  ‘Oh yes, would you like to see it? Mike, Mikey, I’m just going to show your lady friend the studio. If we’re not back in ten minutes, let yourself out, ha ha.’ And James and Lipstick Girl wandered off toward the barn.

  And it was a barn: dark and cold, with straw on the floor even though the place hadn’t had an animal in it for years. Lipstick Girl shivered as she walked into the middle of the room and looked around. There was a hole in the roof, big enough to see a couple of stars through, and a puddle on the floor to prove the hole worked even if the rest of the place didn’t. In the middle of the barn was a semi-circle of guitar amps. There were three amps, one of which was covered in cigarette burns, and all of them were dusty and old. At the far end was the blacked-out console room. ‘Doesn’t look like what I imagined a recording studio would look like,’ said Lipstick Girl, who was wishing she had brought a coat.

  ‘Yeah, a lot of people expect something shiny with machines everywhere. But a studio is a place of work. Come on, I’ll show you the nerve centre.’

  James marched off toward the end of the barn, bumping into what appeared to be an oil drum. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘Bloke up the road asked me to store some stuff for him when he was having his place inspected. He was paying, and I thought they might make an interesting noise if you banged them. That’s the thing about music, you’re always looking for a sound.’ And when he said it, he actually believed it. ‘So you and Michael, you serious?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she laughed. ‘What’s serious?’

  Which was far too hard a question for James. ‘Here, sit here. You look cold … Here.’ He took off his cardigan. It smelt of cannabis and sweat, but it was thick, and Lipstick Girl was cold. She sat down in a dusty imitation leather chair in front of the console and James stood behind her. She could feel him leaning on the chair, forcing it to rock gently backwards and forwards, and she could see his breath in the cold, which meant he was closer than he needed to be. She looked around: to her left was a drum kit, to her right an old upright piano. Almost exactly between them were three microphone stands standing in a puddle. She looked up and saw another hole. As she did so she felt James’s warm breath on her exposed neck. She got up quickly.

  ‘You’ve got another hole up there.’ She didn’t turn round. If she had, she would have seen James half-falling over into the chair as it tipped back. Recovering quickly, he glanced up. It was another hole, right above where the singer would stand.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ he mumbled. ‘Let’s go back, shall we? Don’t want the others to worry.’ Which was music to her ears. Or at least the nearest thing to music anyone was likely to hear in that place.

  Back in the house Julie and Michael were still half whispering. It was a hard habit to break. ‘He’s putting on a bit of a show, isn’t he?’ said Michael.

  ‘Yeah, he’s got this idea into his head about getting your old band back together.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘No, he’s been phoning around, he’s going to see someone called Bernie.’

  ‘Bernie? Bernie hates James, James videoed himself and Bernie’s young and stoned god-daughter fucking … . Sorry.’

  ‘Oh Christ, Michael, I don’t mind. James and I haven’t been near each other in months. I see myself as a lodger, not sure what he sees me as. Actually, I was going to ask, you doing anything tomorrow lunchtime?’

  ‘You asking me for a date?’ joked Michael.

  ‘One step at a time,’ smiled Julie. ‘I’m moving to Norwich tomorrow and, no, James doesn’t know yet. I’m going to stay with one of my students.’

  ‘Is that allowed?’

  ‘I’m a part-time adult art teacher and she is a seventy-five-year-old woman. Believe me, I’ve encountered worse cases of teacher-student abuse. I wondered if you fancied meeting for coffee?’

  ‘Sure. Twelve-thirt
y by the clock tower?’

  ‘Fine,’ said Julie, who looked up and nodded toward James and Lipstick Girl as they returned.

  ‘Hey Mikey, your lovely friend wants to hear what we sounded like. I can’t believe you haven’t played her any of our stuff.’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  ‘What do you mean, you haven’t got any?’

  ‘I mean I haven’t bloody got any.’

  ‘Well how about a little show? I’ll get you a guitar.’

  ‘And I’ll get my coat,’ said Michael.

  ‘Oh well,’ said James, remembering that he hadn’t sung outside of the shower for a decade, ‘It’ll have to be a record, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh Christ,’ murmured Michael.

  ‘I’ll get you a drink,’ said Julie, trying not to laugh and failing. ‘And then you can tell us all which bits are you. Hey, I’ve got an idea, I could go and get a tennis racket and you could act it out for us.’

  11

  The next morning James had woken with a rare enthusiasm for life and Margate. He was a bit nervous about getting down there and seeing Bernie, but if his brief flirtation with Zen had taught him anything, it was to try to live in the moment. The moment he should be in by now was on the B1108 four miles from the A11. Unfortunately, he was still stuck in an altogether unexpected moment where Julie was telling him that she was moving out and that there was a cheque for a month’s rent in the kitchen.

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ lied James, reading the cheque. ‘Anyway, you paid a month’s deposit; I suppose you’ll want that back.’

  ‘You can send it to me.’ Julie knew that if you wanted a quick getaway sometimes you had to pay for it.

  ‘Where will you be?’ asked James in a whiney voice.

  ‘In town for a while, staying with a friend.’

  ‘What friend? Not Michael!’ Which surprised them both. Being left was one thing—actually it was a big thing. Pop stars, James felt, sang about being left; they weren’t actually left. Well, except Bryan Ferry, and he could get away with it. But being left for your bass player?