Scabby Queen Read online

  Neil knew.

  Last night, in the pub, he’d spun a vision of himself, one of those legendary Rolling Stone journalists matching the band drink for drink, putting everything on expenses, turning in definitive interviews down the line to the copy desk from truck stops and neon-blasted motels, and round the table everyone had nodded, believed him.

  Squinting through the hangover now, digging his hands into the disintegrating foam of the Skoda’s seat as his stomach lurched with each swerve, he felt embarrassed for himself. Beside him, Deek clenched the wheel, his pink head bumping the car’s ceiling. Neil could have been sitting on a nice calm train now, reading the papers, gazing at the scenery; however, both his editor and Danny the tour manager had been keen for this, the much cheaper option.

  ‘Deek’ll get you there,’ the tour manager had told him yesterday, cocky and smooth through the warped line from some Highland payphone somewhere. ‘He’s a good boy.’

  As the car strained and whined under the bald giant’s foot, Neil imagined his own obituary, a tiny paragraph in the back of the paper he had not been working at long enough to merit much more in.

  The scheme Neil grew up on had been full of Deeks, lumpy boulders of self-satisfaction, utterly impermeable to reason. Until this point, Neil’s tried and tested method of dealing with them had been to keep his head down and duck away: it was perhaps the only great benefit of being small. Nowhere to duck to today, though. Deek fumbled in the tiny glove compartment with fingers the size of sausages, the old ink of a faded eagle seeping into the skin of his wrist, chucked out a road atlas greying and tatty, not quite held together with ring binders and Sellotape.

  ‘Here. We get lost, it’s on you, eh.’

  ‘So. Are you working on this tour then?’

  ‘What tour?’

  ‘The singer. Clio Campbell. Touring the Highlands. Are you a roadie on it or something?’

  ‘Fuck naw. I know the boy Danny cos I’ve done security at a couple of his club nights, eh. He asked me if I’d drive a wee journalist up somewhere. Probably could’ve charged him more if I’d known you’d keep me waiting around, eh?’

  ‘Aye. Ha ha. So, is that what you do, then? You’re a bouncer?’

  ‘Only in the evenings, pal. I do removals. House moves. Ken?’

  ‘Oh aye. So, have you got a van?’

  ‘We can get a van.’

  This was painful, Neil thought. Painful and due to continue for another four and a half hours. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, trying to discourage Deek from turning his head to engage him.

  ‘So, you said you knew Danny, aye? What’s he like?’

  Deek smirked. ‘Danny’s a good boy.’

  ‘Funny, he said that about you.’

  ‘Did he, aye? Cheeky cunt.’

  ‘Known him long?’

  ‘Bout five year. He keeps the work coming, aye. Good about paying cash in hand, ken. We could aw do with a bit of that.’

  ‘But you’ve not heard of Clio?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The artist. The singer on the tour he’s promoting.’ The reason we’re trapped together in this rusting deathmobile. ‘She had a big hit a few years back. “Rise up … everybody rise up …”?’

  ‘Oh aye, rings a wee bell.’

  ‘Red hair. Lipstick.’

  ‘Bint, aye? Well, Danny’ll be getting stuck into it.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Aye. He’ll be right up in about that. Proper fanny-magnet, Danny boy.’

  They arrived in Ullapool two hours after they were supposed to, with the gig due to start in forty minutes. Neil had tried calling the number Danny had given him from a payphone at a service station, but the receptionist had said she was sorry, the rooms in the bunkhouse didn’t have phones, so she wouldn’t be able to get hold of anyone. Another great sign.

  Deek pulled in across from the hotel. ‘Right. That’s where you are. Now I’m going to get something to eat, then I’m away down the road.’

  ‘You not coming to the gig?’

  ‘What? Naw. No into that lassie music pish.’

  Neil felt like kissing the pavement. He pulled the holdall out and didn’t look back, hearing Deek clanking and banging the car into reverse as he crossed the road. The hotel looked nice; cosy. He imagined sleeping in crisp sheets.

  ‘Sorry, love; we’re all full tonight, I’m afraid.’

  The receptionist, a warm lady in her fifties, smiled at him.

  ‘No, no, there should be a reservation for me? Neil Munro.’

  ‘I’ve nothing in that name, I’m afraid.’

  Neil looked around himself. The street was empty – Deek had driven off.

  ‘I’m with the Clio Campbell tour party. Danny Mansfield was my contact name – he’s maybe booked the room himself?’

  ‘Oh, of course. Sorry, son, I must have given you a wee fright there. They’ve already got the room key. You’re over the road in the bunkhouse. Have you brought your own sleeping bag?’

  ‘Eh, what? Nobody told me …’

  ‘OK. Well, you can hire a sheet sleeping bag – we need to take a five-pound deposit, I’m afraid. Been losing a few of them this season.’

  The sheet didn’t fit into his already stuffed holdall, so he draped it through the straps. One corner kept falling loose and dragging along the ground, picking up dirt that would probably count against his deposit. As he walked along the street – mostly chippies, tartan-hemmed pubs and mountaineering-gear shops – he reflected again that it was a strange place for a gig.

  ‘That’s the point, though,’ Clio had said when she’d phoned, out of the blue, a month ago. ‘Thirty dates, none of them in cities. That’s what makes it revolutionary. We’re challenging the hegemony of the cities; we’re bringing the music to the real people of Scotland. Don’t you think there’s a story in that?’

  Admit it, he thought to himself. Admit why you’re here. He hadn’t seen her in years, not seen seen her. Television didn’t count, nor did the posters that went up everywhere when the single started to sell, Clio’s wild hair smoothed out by some potion or other, her slash of lipstick a red flag, single point of colour against the monochrome. The closest he’d got was at a poll tax rally in George Square, before the song had been signed, when she was welcomed on the stage by Tommy Sheridan, hand at the small of her back, as ‘a very talented young lady with a song I think you’ll like’, but he’d been one in a thousand that day, couldn’t even fool himself that she was looking at him. Her voice had been hesitant at first, but she’d found herself quickly, the whole rally joining her on a chorus they’d only just learned.

  ‘Rise Up’ had become the anthem of the anti-poll tax movement, Clio standing on stages in Liverpool and Edinburgh and Manchester and London, her hair in a scarf and her denim jacket studded with badges. People began to cheer for her in advance if they knew she was on the bill. Cli-o! Cli-o!

  Some opportunist A&R man had seen the potential and snapped her up, and Neil had eaten dinner to the incongruous sight of Gogsy Duke’s ex on Top of the Pops, refusing to mime along, and stripping off a paisley waistcoat to reveal a CAN’T PAY, WON’T PAY T-shirt, just standing there in front of the soundless mike, staring into the camera, while the recording played out around her and the rent-a-crowd bopped confusedly. There was a fade and cut back to the grim-faced DJ, who tried to smooth it out with blandishments, but you could hear Clio chanting ‘We’re not gonna pay your …’ in the background. He had loved her all over again in that minute.

  The single had charted at number two, and wobbled in and out of the top twenty for a few weeks before heading back down again. Clio’s antics had earned her a bit of rock and roll credibility, though – there were a couple of oozy, swoony interviews with male journalists in music magazines, lovingly documenting every pint of snakebite she ordered, every swear word her red lips formed. The sense Clio was trying to talk, and the cause itself, was in danger of being drowned out by her glamour, so Neil found himself strangely relieved w
hen ‘Rise Up’ left the top forty and Clio’s face stopped following him. She had apparently toured as a warm-up for the Housemartins; her guest vocal soared over the grinding guitars on a Teenage Fanclub B-side, and he’d switched on the Hogmanay programme a year later, after his mum had fallen asleep with her one and only whisky in hand, to see Clio and Eddi Reader singing back-up for the Proclaimers. There had been no follow-up single, though, no album; nothing for at least two years and now this tour, of village halls and pubs, run by a local promoter. Neil suspected the record company had had enough of their anarchist pop star – all very well having a pretty face, but if the words that came out of it weren’t the right ones – well, there were plenty more pretty faces out there.

  And then the call had come through the switchboard to his desk at the paper. ‘Hello, Neil,’ and then that husky, gorgeous laugh. ‘Remember me?’

  Remember her.

  He’d sat there listening to her, feeling like he was bathing in sunshine. She remembered him; remembered him enough to have tracked his byline, know where he worked. Perhaps she’d been reading his articles at the same time he’d been poring over her profiles, thinking of him and smiling.

  That wasn’t the reason he was here, though, squinting into the cold light of this tiny Highland town, salt in its air. He was here because he’d heard something else in her voice, something she’d tried to cover up with the in-jokes and the purring. Clio Campbell needed him. All right, she needed him for the column inches he could provide, but that was still something, wasn’t it? The more he’d thought about it, this profile she’d basically begged him to write, his tour diary of the first week, could be her last roll of the dice. The thought of her beholden to him … well, he wasn’t proud of it, but it was a good feeling, a strong one.

  The hall had been banged together with cardboard in the Seventies and then just left to rot in the weather. Three sandwich boards outside bore Clio’s face, photocopied into pixels, with 8 P.M. TONIGHT slashed over them in marker pen. Neil walked up a dingy corridor to where a teenage boy sat behind a cash tin.

  ‘Neil Munro – my name should be down?’

  ‘Ah, nope – sorry, buddy.’ Americanisms forced out of a plukey Highland mouth.

  Again. Had anyone on this tour even remembered he was coming?

  ‘Don’t worry, Duncan. This gent’s with me.’

  The well-oiled Edinburgh public-school tones he recognized as belonging to Danny Mansfield. Neil’s first impression was of a satyr. Something about the goatee and the grin, the staccato tap from his Cuban-heeled boots. The hair sprouting from the open shirt-neck. Danny Mansfield wrapped an arm around his shoulders and ushered him into the venue space.

  ‘You finally made it, then! Been waiting around for you for ages. We had to just assume you’d turn up here eventually.’

  Neil pushed down the urge to point out that this was because of the motorway maniac Danny himself had assigned him.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. Deek – well, we got a bit lost on the road.’

  ‘You met big Deek, then? What a character, eh? Top notch. Anyway, here we are. We’ll get your stuff back to the room after, if that’s OK.’

  A few rows of plastic chairs in a dingy room. The stage was just the area of the floor they’d erected a couple of microphones, amps and a drum kit in, old patterned rugs under each of the mikes the only thing drawing the eye. There were about ten people already sitting in there, clutching plastic glasses; a table was set up at the back with cans of beer and jugs of squash, a plate of home baking. Danny Mansfield caught his gaze.

  ‘Provincial entertaining, eh? But that’s how she wants it. It’s important to Clio that we’re reaching people on their own terms.’

  ‘Can I pop, er, backstage? Say hi to her before the gig starts? We’re old friends.’

  Too eager, he realized, even as he said it. Gave Danny Mansfield too much information to play with.

  ‘Don’t think so, fella. She needs a bit of space before she goes on. Just getting her head together, you know. Why don’t we sit you down here just now – can I get you a beer? Yeah? Irene! A beer for my good friend over here … thanks, my darling. Right, Neil, I’d better get back to it. Enjoy the show and we’ll see you after, yeah?’

  His hairy hand with its glaringly manicured fingernails patted Neil on the shoulder twice, and then he was off. Click click click.

  The hall filled up a bit. Neil counted thirty-four people in total, and himself, and the woman standing behind the drinks table. At two pounds a ticket, that probably wouldn’t even pay for their accommodation for the evening (although, he reminded himself, he hadn’t actually seen this ‘bunkhouse’ yet). He slurped warm Tennent’s from a can so old it still had a rusting bathing beauty splayed across it, tuned in to the gentle swoops of pre-gig chatter. It was a mixed crowd – a few kids in their late teens up the back, a couple of grey heads scattered about, the rest looking like young parents, dolled up for a rare night off.

  Plukey Duncan flicked the light switch in the hall off, and the kids up the back moaned like ghosts. Danny Mansfield stepped into the spotlight, created, Neil saw, by three large anglepoise lamps craned at the stage.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to the McCandlish Hall in beautiful Ullapool! This evening’s show will be just over an hour long, and the bar will be open for half an hour after that. Can we ask those of you who’ve brought cameras not to use the flash, please? Gets very distracting. Anyway, I think that’s quite enough from me. Please join me in giving a very warm McCandlish Hall welcome, for An Evening With … the beautiful, the passionate, the effervescent … CLIO CAMPBELL!’

  The McCandlish Hall welcome was self-conscious, a couple of notches up from tepid. The stage stayed empty for a few seconds, then suddenly she was there, purring into the mic.

  ‘Oooh, hello there. Good evening, Ullapool! My name’s Clio … and I’m going to sing a few wee songs for you.’ She turned to the side to tune up her guitar, suddenly shy, as two wan boys and a large bearded man filed onstage behind her and picked up their instruments.

  He took the opportunity of her distraction to risk a proper glance at her. She looked good. Her hair was chucked up on top of her head, tiny curls escaping down her neck, behind a patterned scarf. Huge earrings in a sort of African tribal pattern, white sleeveless top of some sort of lacy material, pretty much melting into her pale skin. Ripped jeans, Doc Martens. She was thinner than he remembered; he could hardly make out the shape of her breasts as she turned back to the front, and the jeans hung off her hipbones. There was a briskness and competency to her movements that he didn’t recognize, as she plugged up the amp, checked the first few notes. It felt strange to be so close to her now, watching her, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to see him while the anglepoise shone in her eyes.

  Her mouth was at the mic again, counting down. ‘A-one two three and—’

  One of the wan boys screeched his guitar, and Danny ran forward, bent double, to fiddle with the settings.

  ‘Dearie me!’ Clio said, pulling a face, covering up. A couple of mild chuckles rose from the people around him. He wanted to let her know that they were with her, that they were on her side. ‘Shall we try that again, boys?’

  She counted down again, and this time the guitar was fine, twangy but fine, sliding out chords that sounded faintly familiar to him, although he couldn’t work out from where. Then Clio began to sing, the slow rasping warmth of her starting somewhere near his stomach, flooding out and through him till his hair crackled with her, even on that crappy PA system.

  ‘O, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.’

  Under her lashes, she glanced off to the side, where the tour manager was standing, winked for a fraction of a second, something like a smile working on her, dimpling the words. Her skin seemed to be beaming in the light.

  Proper fanny-magnet, Danny-boy.

  She played for the promised just-over-an-hour. Rocked-up versions of the auld songs, folk-tinged covers of some r
ecent hits – ‘Joyride’, ‘Losing My Religion’ – and only three of her own tunes. Neither of the two new ones were particularly memorable; slow and acoustic, the other musicians stepping aside to stare at their feet or smoke. Her voice is like whisky, he jotted in shorthand, in the dark, reminding himself to follow up on that later. In between songs, she tried to engage the audience, anger them, as though they were a rally crowd, with lists of the Tory government’s crimes and how they themselves, the people of Ullapool and their children, were being affected. The audience was silent, impatient for her to start singing again, like sleepy junkies focused only on the delayed gratification of the next hit. She finished, of course, with ‘Rise Up’. The teenagers in the back row started whooping and singing along, and she even managed to get the more sedate audience members up the front clapping their hands for a final a cappella take on the chorus.

  As soon as the music stopped, she seemed tiny, confused. She bowed twice, muttered ‘Thank you, Ullapool’ into the microphone, then ploughed offstage by the door to her right, as the applause died away. Duncan flicked the light back on, and the room emptied quickly.

  Clio had been given the community hall’s kitchen as her dressing room. It was wincingly bright. Guitar cases were balanced on cabinets; a make-up bag spilled over the small electric hob. The band leaned around, cans in hand; Clio was perched on a flimsy-looking table, feet on the room’s sole plastic chair, swigging from a bottle of red wine.

  ‘No. It was shit, it was shit, it was shit,’ she was saying, pausing to top herself up. ‘Fucksake, what a bunch of fucking stiffs. Giving me nothing, so of course I fucking froze. Neil! Neil Neil Neil – Neil’s here!’

  She stretched out her arms towards him and he mock-ran towards her, mugging.

  ‘Here you are, here you are. I was so worried when you didn’t show, but Danny said you’d be fine.’

  The hug was tight and real, her arms over his, taking all of him in.

  ‘Argh! It’s been so long.’

  ‘Thank you for doing this, my darling. Really. I’m so sorry you had to see the show on such a terrible night. That audience, eh? My God. The other nights have been so much better – tell him, Donald.’