Chapter Two Making Plans for Nigel
The gig wasn’t their worst, but it was far from their best. They were leagues away from the preternatural flow and otherworldly ease they’d achieved a few weeks ago.
That show had been mental, as though they’d all been possessed or had alien signals beamed directly into their brains.
Mel hadn’t even known they could play like that.
It had seemed, for a fleeting instant, as if they could really make a go of it with this band thing.
But tonight it was back to their old form.
Each of them was an island, doing their own thing.
Julian was over here pulling shapes while Rahul was all the way over there building pagodas.
It was just all wrong. The rift between Jules and Rahul was poisoning the band like a bad apple at the bottom of the barrel.
The few fans they’d managed to amass gave them a lukewarm reception, which was still miles better than what they used to get (if the scar, courtesy of a thrown beer bottle, on Mel’s upper arm was anything to go by).
Despite this, Mel wasn’t fussed. She had an ace up her sleeve, as it were.
Something she knew would turn this whole thing around and get them back on track.
Something that was waiting for them in the greenroom at this very moment.
They left the stage sans enthusiasm. Mel watched as Rahul’s gaze lingered mournfully on the back of Julian’s head, like some sorry Victorian sod gazing after the ghost of his long-lost love.
It was pathetic. Mel couldn’t understand the whole “unrequited love” thing.
If someone didn’t love you back, move on.
They clearly had no taste. And who’d want to be with a bloke with no taste anyway?
* * *
The band almost didn’t see him when they poured into the greenroom. He’d been lying down on the sofa, possibly napping, but perked up like a Labrador retriever when they entered. Mel dove forwards before anyone could have a chance to react. She needed this to play out just right.
“Look at you, you old bastard,” Mel said, allowing herself the rare smile. “Long time no see, eh?”
“Oui,” he said, kissing Mel on either cheek.
She looped her arm companionably through his and presented him to the others. “This is Henri, my old mate from uni. Met on my year abroad in N?mes. He’s just moved to London, and don’t know nobody. I told him to come round.”
“You were magnifique.” He beamed his charming, dimpled smile at them. “Vraiment. The post-New Wave, punk-parody, industrial gothique is -- how do you say? Underestimated? By modern critics. Performing it is a defiance not only to them but to the narrow standards of the industry.”
Mel grinned smugly. He could say anything with that accent of his and it would sound like fucking poetry.
“Finally,” Kwambe said, handsomely. “Someone else who can go on about that rubbish with Rahul.” He stuck out his hand for Henri to shake, all blinding white teeth and smiling brown eyes. “I’m Kwambe. This tall one is Rahul.”
Henri dismissed his hand and kissed both of his cheeks instead, moving quickly onto Rahul. He had to pull Rahul down by the shoulders to do so, and, if Mel wasn’t mistaken, Rahul was distinctly red around the ears afterwards.
“Enchante,” Henri said.
“And I’m Julian,” Julian pointed out impatiently.
“Ah, oui,” Henri said, “Melanie’s brother. I’ve heard much about you.” But he made no motion to kiss him on the cheek as he’d done the others. “Rahul, I could not take my eyes off your keyboard work. Did you train classically?”
“I did, as a matter of fact.” Now Rahul was the one beaming, and that was a rare sight indeed for the gawky man. “I trained in the piano, the bassoon, the trumpet, the guitar, and the violin.”
“Ah, c’est vrai. I could tell. It was in the way you moved between alternate scales.”
“You have a good ear, sir. Do you play an instrument yourself?”
“It is a misfortune, but I do not. I am only an enthusiast.”
“You should learn. I think you’d pick up an instrument easily. Where are you staying in town? I could help tutor you when you’re not busy.”
“Mel, a word? Over here?” Before she could respond, Julian was already dragging her away to the far end of the greenroom.
Rahul and Henri continued to chat as though they hadn’t even noticed.
Kwambe began slowly extracting himself so he could go light up at his and Mel’s usual spot.
Mel longed to join him and made up her mind to shrug Julian off as quickly as possible.
“Not bad, eh?” Mel told him proudly once they were sufficiently far away. “It was the best I could do under short notice, but it’s worked out pretty well if I do say so myself.”
Julian gaped at her. “You can’t mean this is the bloke you’re setting Rahul up with.”
She frowned. “Well, yeah. Who’d you think he was? Father Christmas?”
“You really couldn’t do better than… him?” His mouth curled in distaste around the word as he eyed the skinny Frenchman.
Mel couldn’t help seeing the irony. Henri was practically the French version of Julian.
An inch or two shorter, possibly even skinner, but just as pale.
With naturally dark, curling hair and a boyish smattering of freckles across his sharply featured face, Mel dared say he might even be better looking than Julian himself.
When she’d first been set the task of finding Rahul a Julian replacement, she’d sent feelers out through her network of trendy Camden bohemians, inquiring after available young men interested in other available young men.
It just so happened her old friend was in town and on the pull and, as she remembered from her school days, he made a decent Julian facsimile.
She hadn’t realised how much of an upgrade Rahul would be getting until she saw Julian and Henri next to each other.
“Yeah, well, they seem to be getting on fine, don’t they?”
Julian sneered because it was clear that they were getting on. Better than Mel could’ve hoped. “You couldn’t have found somebody less…”
“French?”
“Pompous.”
“Yeah, I’ll give you he’s a bit of an arrogant prick, but he isn’t for me or you, is he?” She clapped him on the back. “Just sit back and let the Mel magic work, yeah? You’ll have your Scandinavian paramour back in no time.”
The way Julian was eyeing Henri, as if he were a clump of waterlogged hair dredged up from the drain, suggested he was less than convinced.
* * *
Rahul was fascinated. Chatting with this young man was so natural that before he knew it they were entirely apart from the others, sitting on the defunct amplifier and a stack of folding chairs, entirely engrossed in their conversation.
He couldn’t even gauge how long they’d been talking, except for noting that Mel and Kwambe had long since finished their post-gig spliff and were in the process of rolling another one.
“Pardonnez-moi,” Henri said, smiling, his French liquid and warming like a fine whiskey. “I have -- how do the English say? ‘Chewed your ear off’? You must want to get back to your friends.”
“I --” Rahul looked for Julian out of habit. He was nowhere to be seen. An echo of their conversation at the shop struck his heart like aftershocks. I think I could live with you having feelings for me, even if I don’t feel ‘em back.
Rahul shook himself and smiled for this charming, attractive young man who seemed to genuinely want to talk to him. “Ah, no. Actually, would you like a drink?”
They found themselves at the Mango’s bar.
After shows, the stage darkened and the floor opened up for dance as flaccid punk and watery New Wave music played over the speakers.
The dancing club goers all seemed to Rahul to be baby-faced pubescents playing dress-up.
At least the bar was decent. He was sipping from a sensible lager while Henri was knocking back courageous swigs of a Sahara-dry martini.
“What was that you were saying about Nabokov?” Henri asked, his words perfect but accent thick as rich cream. “I love the -- how do you say? Self-reflexive nature of postmodernism.”
Rahul beamed in the way he so seldom did, the way he did when he was firmly rooted in an area of his expertise. “So do I! I find meta-works to be some of the most introspective, even more so than satire. Though, of course, those lines are often blurred.”
They lost themselves once more in conversation.
Rahul marvelled because he had so rarely found someone he could speak with so freely.
The only other person in his life it was this easy to banter with was Julian, but that was entirely different.
He and Jules spoke their own language, abstract and strange and exhilarating, but altogether substanceless.
Henri shared all the interests of Rahul’s that Julian couldn’t stand: black and white films, jazz, literature, theatre.
He could scarcely believe that a man so young and handsome would enjoy what Julian often referred to as “old man hobbies.”
And he was terribly handsome, at that. He was about Mel’s age, so at least four years Rahul’s junior, Henri had the beauty of a sleek racehorse or a polished obsidian dagger.
He had all the ingredients of a man that would be too cunning and go too fast for simple, ordinary Rahul.
But somehow this stallion built for speed kept at a trot alongside Rahul’s knackered old mare and he didn’t seem to mind one bit.
In fact, he seemed to prefer the slow lane.
The fact that this stunning creature’s attention shone exclusively on Rahul like a homing beacon was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.
He felt like he was playing outside of his league.
Any moment now, Henri would broach a subject too esoteric for him and would inevitably lose interest, moving on to someone who could keep pace with him.
But the minutes, then the hours, ticked by and they remained shoulder to shoulder, as absorbed in each other as ever. More so, even.