Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [38]
These low-ranking wannabes were the ticks in the exquisitely tailored hides of their idols; struggling to conceal Bristol accents as they ordered their Double Diamonds, borrowing catch phrases they’d overheard about the state of the market - and which market it was, perhaps they didn’t even know.
The women posing around the plush but incredibly soulless wine bar knew the score; gold-digging secretaries or struggling lower-paid execs in low tops with big smiles. Lured away from preoccupations about blue-collar boyfriends by the flash of cash.
Fifty-pound notes were so much more pleasing on the eye than the scrumpled quid Dave or Terry offered over the bar down the local.
Above the gleaming brass bar, crystal chandeliers glowed tastefully. The setting sun played on them, streaming through the great arched windows. More arches, exquisitely marbled, opened on to the recessed lavatories while white, fluted pillars ran the length of the long room. Above the complacent, chattering throng, Renaissance characters frowned down reproachfully on this modern decadence from gilded frames. The fiercely manufactured elegance was neoclassical, and the fact that the building had once been a Lloyds Bank simply added to the irony.
The singer wielded his microphone stand like a spear, prodding it out into the audience for them to roar the chorus into the mouthpiece.
‘SCUM!! WE’RE THE SCUM, SCUM OF THE EARTH!!’
Then he snatched it back, belched out more obscenities masquerading as lyrics, his face contorted with ogre rage.
The guitarist hunched over, hacking rhythms from his 94
instrument. The bassist was spitting blood into the crowd, his mouth growling wide, wider than any mouth should go. And the drummer was joining in the barbaric fun, nutting his cymbals with his scarred club of a head. He finished this display with a stream of shining green vomit that splattered his snare drums.
‘How do they do that?’ Jo shouted into Sin’s ear as they stood at the very front of the twisting, leaping crowd, buffeted this way and that. She had to hold on to the Chinese girl for safety. Sin didn’t answer - but she remembered the foul stink of the liquid spraying down on to her, and she smiled a secret smile and began dancing, pulling Jo around with her.
A foul odour came off the band like heat. Rotten compost cabbage animal spew smell. Jo’s nostrils flinched from it, but she knew she was grinning regardless. The little Chinese girl’s enthusiasm was infectious, and Jo felt a violent joy that was all her own rip through her. She was a wild child dancing a discord dance as the Earth churned beneath her careless feet. And why should they care? Why should the Doctor dash frantically through the universe putting right things that would probably sort themselves out anyway, if he only left them alone.
Always rushing around, meddling.
When he could be dancedance-dancing.
Who gave a toss about anything?
All the signposts pointed to the same place didn’t they, in the end? All roads led to Home.
Better to sit in your armchair and do nothing. Do nothing or dance the discord dance...
The guitarist charged abruptly to one side, his boot lashing out.
He kicked a leaning gravestone flat on its back, then spun, all in one lithe movement, machine gunning horrendous riffs into the loving audience. The singer posed, legs apart, mike detached from its stand and pumping at groin level; threw his head back and then let fly a torrent, a spew of white squirming objects from his mouth.
Maggots.
95
They cascaded into the crowd, festooning spiked hair and hippie beards alike... and several hundred voices screamed with insane fervour.
The bassist was atop a tomb, swinging his bass dangerously.
Then he was airborne, came crashing down on a gravestone, falling with it, rising, pummelling his bass continuously, shades still clamped across his eyes.
Jo realised Sin had stopped dancing. She could see the white grubs squirming in the luxuriant blackness of the Chinese girl’s gorgeous hair,