‘Too bloody right!’ Jane yodelled, startling some smart suits just easing their way inside. She leered at them.
Liz was rescued from her moment of lucidity and doubt by Fran, who cut sharply through the crowd carrying three golden tickets.
‘We’re in!’ Liz grinned, snatching hers. She called over to Jane, who had her face squashed against the glass doorway, ‘Jane, we’re in!’
‘Yes, but it’s —’ Fran began but Liz took command, grasped both her companions firmly by the crooks of their arms and marched them outside. As they headed for the main road, Fran tried again. ‘But it isn’t their usual. They gave me the usual tickets, but they said it isn’t their usual.’
‘What’s their usual?’
‘I never asked. But they said that tonight it was Goth Night.’
‘It was what? It’s a what?’ Jane was struggling to make them slow down.
‘When they all dress up in black. You know, Goths. I got the tickets, but I didn’t know whether you’d still want to go.’
Jane looked confused. Liz beamed. ‘You’re wearing black anyway, Fran, so you’re OK. And if the rest of them are, it’ll just make me and Jane stand out more, won’t it?’
There’s a particular dance they do, Vince thought, all the Goths.
He was sitting at a wickerwork table, resting a bottle of Pils on the glass top and watching the dance floor. It was swathed in purple mist to about knee height and peopled by a series of thin silhouettes, all of them waving their arms in the air, moving very slowly.
They seem to be beseeching. They keep looking at the ceiling with pained expressions, raising their arms and clawing above their heads, then sinking back in resignation. Like Christopher Lee at the end of a Hammer horror. It’s not as if there’s anything up there worth beseeching. A few lights. But they’re all at it.
He watched Andy, standing in his own private space, doing much the same thing. Perhaps a little better than the others, Vince reflected. They were rocking gently and thoughtfully to Dinosaur Junior. Again it struck Vince as odd to see someone you’d been sleeping with at a distance on a dance floor. Their mystery is regained; suddenly they look independent and divorced, yet available. Sometimes he thought it might be nice to keep every lover at arm’s length, all the time.
He started to look around, beyond the dance floor. It was dark but every now and then he would catch sight of the occasional bleached blonde head on a body slumped on steps by the bar. Next to the bar there were lots of white faces, painted white with cheekbones carefully accentuated. People with drinks were bumping into each other because they didn’t like to take their shades off. They apologised shyly to each other with shrugs and smirks.
Now the DJ was playing the Cure. More bodies on the floor, eager to reach up and worship the light fittings. Vince sighed. He had been here before. Nothing much had changed. Something about Andy and Andy’s attitude over the past two days had almost convinced him that this time would be different somehow. Classic, even. Vince was beginning to distrust his own perception of what ‘classic’ meant.
He wanted something to look back upon in his old age. Something about which he could declare, ‘I was there. I was doing that then.’ He wanted something to write his memoirs about. At times he felt that the whole of life was geared around doing enough things to fill up all your memory-time in old age. He wasn’t going to have children. Classic memories, classic thoughts, and the power to vocalise them. That was what he wanted for his old age.
At other times he couldn’t imagine living beyond the age of twenty-four. It seemed obscene somehow.
Fran, Jane and Liz were shuffling their way into the darkness. They squinted into the smog, assessing the state of play.
‘I don’t really like it.’ Jane had to shout over the music (‘Boys Don’t Cry’, which she remembered from the Youthy years ago).
‘They tried to warn us,’ Fran said.
Liz seemed delighted with the place. She pushed through the knot of figures standing by the door and made for the bar. The others followed.
At first Vince was mildly surprised, as others were, by the sight of the three women coming in and ordering exotic cocktails on the wrong night. Then he recognised them as Penny’s mother and her friends from the cafe yesterday. This is it, he thought, standing up. This was the something different. Bauhaus were crashing into ‘Ziggy Stardust’. His heart skipped a beat as he went to tap Liz on her golden shoulder.
She was caught in verbal mid-stride, carefully enunciating a list of cocktails across the sloppy bar. She turned open-mouthed to Vince. ‘Penny’s little friend!’ she gasped. Fran and Jane shoved in closer, glad to have something on which to concentrate in a place that felt threatening.
‘Vince!’
‘That’s it. Are you here with friends?’
‘Is Penny here?’
‘No; this is the old mothers’ night out. I’ve never been in here before. Is it any good?’
Her dress really did stand out against all that black. She was a shining gold from the highlights down. Even her face looked burnished and colourful.
‘Do you want to dance?’
Liz beamed. ‘To “Ziggy Stardust”? I’d be delighted.’
She left Fran and Jane to order the drinks.
Fran found them a table in a dark corner. There was only one other person there, a drunk girl with very short hair. She was glaring into her handbag. ‘Men are all bastards,’ she told Fran and Jane as they sat down and she stood up to go.
‘We know,’ said Fran with a smile.
‘I’ve shrunk one of them to fit inside this bag. As revenge.’ She held out her velveteen handbag and gave it a vigorous shake. ‘It’s an antique bag. He’ll probably ruin it. Bastard!’ She lurched off towards
