Friday Nights Read online

  Eleanor said nothing. She poured water into the coffee pot, and stirred the contents.

  She said, ‘Does he need approving of?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Blaise said.

  ‘Haven’t you?’

  ‘No. All I know is that he came into Paula’s shop and placed a huge order. That he’s about forty and single and called Jackson.’

  ‘And he’s to be paraded before us.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Eleanor put the coffee pot on the table, on top of a garden catalogue. Blaise got up to find mugs.

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘I can do it. I’d like to—’

  Eleanor lowered herself into a chair.

  ‘So you were deputed to come and warn me of this great happening.’

  Blaise put two mugs on the table.

  ‘I just came. I thought you’d like to know. I thought you’d like to be prepared.’

  ‘Don’t you think Paula might tell me herself?’

  Blaise shrugged. She picked up the cuffs of the sweater tied round her shoulders and inspected them.

  ‘Or,’ Eleanor said, ‘do you want me to react? For the sake of your own reaction?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Eleanor poured coffee.

  ‘He’s a natural progression, isn’t he? First a new flat, then a new job. He was what was lacking.’

  ‘He may be lovely,’ Blaise said.

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘We may be jealous.’

  ‘Only – if we need to be.’ She pushed a mug towards Blaise.

  Blaise said, ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I think you’ll – sort of steady it.’

  ‘I think you are verging on the melodramatic. Paula has got overexcited again and met a personable man she wishes to display to us.’

  ‘It – it, well, it feels like more.’

  Eleanor looked at her.

  ‘Does it?’

  Blaise leaned forward.

  ‘Don’t you ever have feelings of foreboding? Don’t you ever worry that people you’ve come to rely on mightn’t be reliable? Mightn’t even be there any more?’

  There was a tiny beat. Eleanor met her eye.

  ‘Never,’ Eleanor said firmly.

  Chapter Five

  If there was one place in the world that could be guaranteed to lift Jules’ spirits – apart from a club – it was D’Arblay Street. D’Arblay Street, Soho, London, W1. She went every week, saving the visits as a kind of insurance policy against all the frustrations and disappointments that she seemed to bang into all the time. When things went wrong, she’d think to herself that on Thursday there’d be D’Arblay Street, and if things – seldom – went OK or a little bit better, she’d tell herself that she could go on Monday too, and celebrate.

  She’d been going to D’Arblay Street since she was twenty. A boy in a club, a thin, dark boy called Benny, told her he worked in a record shop in D’Arblay Street and suggested she drop in. He told her the shop was frequented by disc jockeys who bought their vinyls there, to mix on their own decks at home.

  ‘It’s the core of the scene,’ Benny said to her. He bought her a Red Bull and vodka. ‘It’s the underground.’

  The shop itself had a narrow entrance, painted black. Inside it was narrow too, lined on one side with a long counter. There were three playing decks along the counter, and a double deck on the L-shape at the end, and all the vinyls, in their bright jackets, were on racks behind the counter, so arresting that you didn’t bother to look up and notice that the ceiling tiles were all about to fall off. Those racks were the thing. Those racks of talent and energy were what gave Jules a thrill every time she went in, all that red and yellow and pink and blue, all those punchy band names – Fanatix, Hardsoul, Fridayloop, Code Red – all the knowledge that the guys playing this stuff played live, with real instruments.

  Benny had been too serious about the music in the shop to seem overtly pleased to see her. When she told him that all she wanted was to be a DJ he hadn’t scoffed at her, he’d just said, ‘You’ll have to fight your corner.’

  ‘Because I’m a girl?’

  ‘You’ll have to assert yourself. It’ll have to be the only thing you want to do.’

  ‘It is,’ Jules said.

  Benny had told her she had to specialize her music. Why not try house, he said, that’s what he was into, in fact had been into it since he was thirteen.

  ‘It’s coming up,’ he said. ‘Hip-hop and R & B have been the choice for kids for so long, but house is coming up. Watch out for funky house.’

  Jules loved it, loved house music. She loved the fact that it had an uplifting, positive message, that the four-four beat – that beat that felt like the pump in her blood – always gave way to a breakdown, when everyone on the dance floor stopped dancing and started swaying, slowly, hands in the air, eyes fixed on the DJ, waiting, waiting, waiting for the beat to pick up, the pump to start up again. She loved the fact that it had no dress-code image, that it had originated in a gay club in Chicago – how cool was that? – that it had a strong European profile. She loved the fact that when she was playing it she had a conviction so strong – she wanted to cry sometimes at the relief of being so certain – that this music, playing this music, was all she wanted to do.

  Benny sold her her first vinyls. He also found, through a friend, her first decks, which she carried round all the places she was dossing, the floors of friends’ flats, the sofa in Lindsay’s sitting room. And he took her to Soundproof, the club where she was first allowed to DJ, he took her and pointed her at the manager’s closed office door and said, ‘Sell yourself.’

  That’s what it had been about, the last three years: selling herself. She’d thought the music would do the communicating but that wasn’t what the clubs wanted. Sure, they wanted the music, the music was key, but the music had to be worthy of being on the dance floor, and only a DJ could keep it that way. Only a good DJ could keep the dance floor full, push the boundaries, keep the beat moving, keep the mood alive. If she wanted to impress the dance promoters, she had to know, to learn, how to keep that floor full, and moving. She had to develop her name.

  Miss Jools, she called herself. She might like Benny and his shop the best, but she had to go round all the shops, all the clubs, she had to listen to all the music, all the big DJs, to read what they, the DJ stars, the Norman Cooks and the Pete Tongs, said and thought.

  She had a quote from DJ Pierre pasted on the side of one of her decks: ‘The DJ’s power is like a parent. It’s like a president. The DJ has a responsibility, like any person in power. When you have an audience, you better do the right thing and make sure you educate.’

  And on the other deck was a battered magazine picture of Francis Grasso, the Italian-American born in Brooklyn, who was the first DJ to mix records, the man regarded as the godfather of beat-mixing, the man who started all the amazing stuff back in the late sixties, which felt like prehistory to Jules. His picture – big, soft face framed with long, curly dark hair – was an inspiration and comfort to Jules. Francis Grasso proved that music, this music, didn’t need you to be rich or beautiful or especially educated, it just needed you to love it and understand it and want to share it. And that, Jules told Alan Hayes, the manager of Soundproof, was how she was. All she wanted was to have a connection with the crowd and put the best energy through her mix. Alan Hayes, who looked, Jules thought, more like a bank manager than a club boss, said he’d heard all that before but he’d give her a try, he’d let her do a warm-up.

  That had been the beginning, that warm-up. She was given two hours, till ten-thirty, and she was so excited and so nervous she thought she might faint. The club had been empty at first, then there’d been the first handful, then a few more and then, just before the real DJ took over, a line of boys in front of her watching, taking her in, not sneering, just looking to see if she was any good, assessing.

  When the session was over, she’d been
wired to the ceiling. She’d bought a few Es for a tenner and danced till daybreak and then slept on someone’s floor till Lindsay woke her by ringing to ask how it had all gone. She cried then, cried because she was so excited and tired and relieved and longing to be back in that booth with the decks and the strobe lighting and those treble and bass controls that you could ride the crowd with.

  ‘Did they pay you?’ Lindsay said.

  ‘Yeah—’

  ‘How much?’

  Jules rolled over. She was in someone else’s sleeping bag and there were, well, garments of some kind at the bottom. She pulled her feet up.

  ‘Two hundred.’

  ‘Two hundred what?’

  ‘Quid,’ Jules said.

  ‘Two hundred quid for playing records for two hours?’ Lindsay said incredulously.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Jules—’

  ‘A top DJ,’ Jules said, proud of the mountain peaks of her new profession, ‘gets thousands. Ten, maybe.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  Jules said nothing. She lay on the dirty carpet with her phone to her ear and her eyes closed and smiled. It didn’t matter. Two hundred quid didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. She had done two hours and she had done good.

  Since, she had not so much done bad as found it hard. There were more rival girls than she had bargained for, more competition for promoters’ attention, for radio plays of original mixes, more antagonism from the men. It wasn’t so hard to be tomboyish and assertive, but it was hard to have to push twice as much, to prove yourself eternally, to start anew with every club, every audience, just because girls had to go twice the distance to establish themselves.

  ‘Show me,’ promoters kept saying. ‘OK. I know you did it last time. But show me again.’

  That was where D’Arblay Street came in. She only had to go back there, and talk to Benny, and pick out some new vinyls, to remember why she was doing this, why this struggle had to be worth it, what had got her started. Benny always had someone new for her to listen to – a couple of rising producers from Croydon, a Frenchman singing in English who was going to take the summer club scene by storm – and always reminded her that, in the end, this was about the music, and nothing else.

  ‘You’ll get there,’ Benny said. ‘You’ll mix something that catches on.’

  It was Lindsay’s suggestion that she start a blog, on the web. Lindsay had done a computer course when Noah started school, and it was one of the few things that she and Jules didn’t argue over.

  ‘MySpace,’ Lindsay said. ‘That’s what you want. You need a site on MySpace.’

  They set it up on Lindsay’s computer. Miss Jools. Miss Jools – Soundproof. Miss Jools – Soundproof – Ask Me!

  The first message came the first day.

  ‘Yo, Jules! Ow R ya? Hey, luv ur stuff. Spreadin the word.’

  Then two more.

  ‘Good to see a female reppin!’

  ‘You smacked it on Thursday! Keep doin your thing, sister!’

  ‘There,’ Lindsay said.

  The messages began to pour in, ten, twenty, forty, too many to count.

  ‘You throw down one hard beat.’

  ‘Heavy, heavy.’

  ‘Mad respect.’

  ‘Big up to you, peeps!’

  She did three warm-ups on three successive nights and, by the third night, the floor was full by ten-thirty.

  When the main DJ took over he said, ‘Wicked set, honey,’ and then he winked. ‘There’s nothing like it, is there?’

  Going to the manager’s office to collect her wages, Jules knew she was grinning, grinning like an idiot.

  Alan Hayes was on the telephone. When she came in, he didn’t look at her, but he went across to the filing cabinet where he kept the wages and opened a drawer. Then he turned back to Jules and handed her her envelope. She was still grinning. She took her envelope and made for the door.

  ‘Won’t do,’ Alan Hayes said into his phone. ‘Won’t wash. Stop there, Jules.’

  She stopped, her hand on the door.

  ‘Think again,’ Alan Hayes said to his caller. ‘Call me when you’ve thought. You can have a Thursday.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said, call me when you’ve got another idea. You can have a Thursday.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Not for a while. But you can try. I’d want to see minimum 450 through those doors.’

  ‘D’you mean it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Two sets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I want to die,’ Jules said.

  Alan Hayes began to dial another number.

  ‘I’ll give you a date some time next week.’

  ‘Thank you—’

  He waved a hand at her.

  ‘Scoot.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He turned his back.

  She went into the corridor that led to the dance floor and sat down, leaning against the wall, hugging her knees. He was going to give her a set, a proper set, on a Thursday. He was going to hand four hours to her! Four hours! When she’d be in complete control of what the mood was out there, what happened to the energy. She put her eye sockets against her knees and pressed until the blackness behind her lids exploded with random stars. She had to tell Benny. She had to go to D’Arblay Street the next day, and tell Benny.

  Benny wasn’t in. Adam, his manager, who was always grumpy round Jules, said Benny had called in sick and wouldn’t be coming in.

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  Adam put his earphones on and began flicking discs on to the decks along the counter.

  ‘Wouldn’t know. He didn’t say.’

  ‘He’s never sick,’ Jules said, almost accusing.

  Adam shrugged. Jules stared at him for a moment and then turned and went out into the street. A thin, irritating drizzle was falling. She flipped her phone open and dialled.

  ‘Lin?’

  ‘I’m at work,’ Lindsay said in a whisper. ‘You know I’m at work. Are you OK?’

  Jules pictured Lindsay, in her blue polyester suit, in the back office of the building society where she worked, visible but inaudible to the public behind a glass wall.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘It’s a good thing—’

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  Jules put her face up into the soft dampness. She sighed.

  ‘Meet me at lunchtime,’ Lindsay said.

  Jules sighed again.

  ‘I’m in the West End—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m in Soho.’

  ‘Jules,’ Lindsay said, ‘I’ve got to go. Call me later.’

  Jules snapped her phone shut and gripped it. She closed her eyes, and counted. She counted backwards from twenty, then up again. Then she opened her eyes and began walking, slowly, up towards Oxford Street. She had open-toed shoes on, and in a while, with the rain, there’d be black, gritty splashes of damp in her shoes. Why did Benny have to get sick?

  In a coffee bar on Oxford Street, she ordered a tea, grande size, and took it to a high stool in the window. There were a couple of schoolgirls on the next stools, wearing personally customized versions of their uniforms, and they gave Jules long, insolent looks – the holey leggings, the minidress, the pinstriped jacket with gold braid on the sleeves and shoulders, the pink plastic peep-toes – before collapsing in giggles together. Jules hitched herself on to her stool, and put both hands round her tea mug, and stared out into the rain. People were putting up umbrellas and resting carrier bags and newspapers on their heads. One man had pulled up the back of his T-shirt, right over his head, so his skinny pale spine was exposed, and his arms hung grotesquely forward, dangling like a puppet’s.

  If it wasn’t for Lindsay, Jules knew – she knew – she’d probably be dead. She wouldn’t be dead for any particularly dramatic reason, but more that she’d have let herself be shoved here and pushed there and abandon
ed somewhere else until neglect and aimlessness just spun her life out into nothing. Literally nothing. Her childhood had made this sort of drifting familiar, sometimes with one parent, sometimes with both, sometimes in a bed-and-breakfast place, or a broken-down flat, even, for a week, with her father in a burnt-out bus in a demolition yard. But always, even in the most chaotic times, there was Lindsay. Even if she didn’t live with them – and she took care not to, as soon as she could – she was around, tense with anxiety but also insistent on some kind of structure, some kind of consistency. When she was sixteen, she’d gone to live with her boyfriend’s family, but she would, somehow, find Jules every week, bringing bananas and clean underwear and reading books. Jules couldn’t remember her smiling. She was too worried to smile. And although Jules knew she had always given Lindsay plenty to worry about, and had often taken very little trouble about minimizing the causes of that worry, she also knew that without Lindsay’s anxiety she’d be lost.

  She looked down into her tea. Half of it remained, but the heat had gone out of it. The two schoolgirls, no doubt compounding their evident truanting, had hitched up their skirts and their sweater sleeves and sashayed out into the rain. Jules got off her stool. She stood for a moment, thinking about the chance Alan Hayes had offered her, about Benny at home in bed in his mother’s flat in Tulse Hill, where he had lived all his life. She looked out of the window. She would get on the tube and make the annoyingly complicated journey down to Fulham Broadway and meet Lindsay for lunch.

  ‘Don’t eat that rubbish,’ Lindsay said pleadingly. ‘I’ve got you a proper sandwich. Chicken salad.’

  Jules looked down at the bag in her hand. Cinnamon-sugar pretzels from Auntie Ann’s in the Fulham Broadway Centre.

  ‘I like them.’

  Lindsay took the bag out of her hand.

  ‘I can’t stand the muck you put in yourself.’

  ‘Don’t start—’

  Lindsay put down a tray with sandwiches and yoghurt and juice on it.

  ‘I want you to eat decent stuff, Jules.’

  ‘I came to see you,’ Jules said. ‘I came. Oxford Circus, I was—’

  Lindsay sat down opposite her and dropped her bag between her feet.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. It’s just—’ She looked at her sister. ‘You know.’