Хелен Девитт - Some Trick - Thirteen Stories

Keith says: Look, mate. I wrote a song. We recorded it today. If I assign the copyright to you, like, you can lend me 500 quid with the song as collateral.

Which is the way even a drummer can end up thinking and talking if he has spent quality time among the suits.

And the ambience adjusts yet again. Because now there is the possibility of transferring the dosh at Marc’s elbow out of the safe custody of a hack who has been checking and folding all night, into the unsafe hands of a raving percussionist.

Go on then old cock, be a sport, says Frank, and Maury says, Least you can do, seeing as you’re a fan and all, and Derek says, Got a piece of paper, Ger? And Ger says, Anything to help a friend,

and suddenly Keith is writing something on a cocktail napkin and signing it and now Marc is sitting there with a cocktail napkin and Keith has many many many piles of chips.

Derek folds. The rest stay in, heartened by the influx of chips at the disposal of El Loco. The turn brings a 6 of hearts. Tel bets another unfriendly £50. Keith sees him. Frank sees him. Maury sees him. Ger folds. The last card goes down. It’s the King of spades. Tel bets £50. Keith raises £50. Frank and Maury fold. Tel raises £50. Keith goes all in, moving all Marc’s former chips to the center of the table. Tel sees him. Cards go down.

Keith has two Aces, making a full house.

Tel has two sixes.

Making 4 of a kind.

Keith says:

Pa PA pa PA pa PA

pa PA pa PA pa PA

pa PA pa PA pa

Unlucky in love, Tel, says Derek. Remind me never to play with you again when yer missus kicks you out.

They’re standing up, stretching, grumbling, talking about next week. It’s over.

Tel is a grand ahead.

Keith has an empty wallet.

Marc has an autographed cocktail napkin.

Marc and Keith stand outside the Oranges and Lemons in the resentful London dawn.

Marc feels the severed 500 quid like an amputated limb. He’s holding the cocktail napkin. It feels both worthless and, like, something he shouldn’t have.

He says: Look, uh, Keith, you’d better have this back, I can’t keep this.

Keith says: You can then. Not to worry, I’ll pay you back. Gissa phone number.

Marc says: I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.

He wants to say: This is not actually my suit. But this would involve explaining that he is a loathsome creature of Murdoch employ, perhaps insufficient exculpation.

He says: Uh, I’m actually a freelance journalist? Any chance I could, like, interview you sometime?

Keith looks at the Suit.

Styrofoam cups are trundling down the desolation of the Commercial Road under an indifferent breeze.

He says: Look. I want you to do me a favour.

Marc says: Yeah sure

Keith: You got whatever the fuck it is you wanted. So just wank off.

Marc: But

Keith: Just fucking Wank. the Fuck. Off.

Keith O’Connor is walking away.

The Suit knows how to deal with the situation. From a pocket comes a hand holding a phone.

ZZZZZZZslik. ZZZZZZZslik.

And for the fuck of it out of the practiced mouth comes: Hey KEITH!

And Keith O’Connor turns, slik slik slik slik

And Keith shouts: Wank OFF wank OFF you fucking wanker

And he turns again and he turns into a side street and Marc thinks: You stiffed me half a grand you wanker so who’s the wanker

It’s pretty quiet.

He puts the phone back in the convenient outside pocket. His hand touches something soft, the paper napkin. He transfers it to the inside pocket of Carnarvon’s finest.

He can’t use his last £1.63 on transportation, it has to see him to the end of the month. He trudges west.

At 7 am Marc is in the Kingsway Starbucks recounting the evening’s squalor to Lucy, who slips him a mega mocha latte and 3 blueberry muffins. He spends the next 5 hours rererererecounting to Claire at the Kingsway Caffé Nero, Nikki at the Holborn Pret A Manger, Eva at the Kingsway Costa Coffee, scoring much-needed provisions for the fundless month.

At noon the Evening Standard hauls in the punters with sorrowful news: KEITH O’CONNOR TRAGIC SUICIDE. He palms a discarded copy in the Shakespeare’s Head and reads with shock and dismay.

But he is down to his last £1.63.

And he is on the phone to his minders at the News of the World with his scoop and they are dead chuffed, Well done mate, give us anything you got, and sure, Roger will be only too happy to reimburse the two hundred quid Marc allegedly lost in the game as a business expense, any pix, they would love to run a centre spread but they would love to have pix, well of course he has pix, what do you think? He has pix of Keith O’Connor’s departing back heading down the desolation of the Commercial Road.

In this fashion did he honour Keith O’Connor’s last request.

He did in fact write an in-depth analysis of the evening for NME.

Missing Lynx did in fact release the previously maligned song as a single. Which with tragic irony went straight to Number 5 in the charts and remained in the top 10 for an amazing 20 weeks.

Marc still has his cocktail napkin which still feels both worthless and like something he should not have. When the song has been at Number 5 for 6 weeks he sidles into the office of the lawyer at the Screws and brings the soft thing from the inside breast pocket of the aristocratic garment, anticipating that he will be dismissed as a twat for even contemplating the possibility that the relic of Oranges and Lemons revelry could be operational in a court of law.

Gayatri says: Crikey. Well done you!

She says: If they contest you might need witnesses, but as far as the language goes this is the business.

We can reveal that Darren and Stewart had spent many hours analysing the source of Sting’s wealth, which derives not least from the fact that he is the author of record of such classics as ‘Every Breath You Take’, ‘Roxanne’, ‘Message in a Bottle’, and ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, such that he receives a fee in the region of $.08 (as of time of writing) every time said songs get air time, years or even decades after the songs slipped off the charts never to return. Whilst the other members of Police get bugger all. The result being that Darren and Stewart had spent many hours arguing over credits for the songs of Missing Lynx, while Sean on keyboards and Keith on drums were never even conceivably going to be in a position to buy an island in the Caribbean. Such that Keith had lost valuable time that might have been spent hitting things absorbing the Language of the Suits by osmosis. Which stood him in good stead when he needed to transfer copyright to a song on a cocktail napkin.

So yeah, needless to say Darren and Stewart were not going to take this lying down, but Marc’s newfound mates at the Oranges and Lemons rallied round, and Sean the keyboardist unexpectedly refused to remember that the song had been more of a thing they had all done together than something any one person could take credit for, and Marc was quids in.

You can’t always get what you want.

Pa Pa Pa PAAAAAAAAAAAAA Pa.

In 1970 they had their one and only legendary US tour.

The Breaks played 100 gigs in 110 days. They played their five hits the way the hits sounded on the record. They played their six other songs so they sounded like their five hits. They were in America, which was where they had all dreamed of going, except they didn’t see it. They saw hotel rooms and stages and the inside of a bus.

The tour was not going well, because before they left their manager had brought out their new LP. The last time they had talked about the cover Pete had had some Op Art-like ideas and their manager had said it was interesting and now here it was.