sixty-six

ELFISH LEANT AGAINST the bar, wreathed in dejection.

“Are you all right?” asked Aran, aware that it was a stupid question.

She shook her head miserably.

“Do you want to leave?”

Elfish did not reply, but placed her hand inside Aran’s jacket to remove the small bottle of whisky she knew he was carrying there. Aran, not naturally a generous spirit, let her take it. He could see that all around them people were still looking at Elfish and laughing and he feared that at any moment she might break down entirely. Elfish began pouring the whisky down her throat. Her brother was relieved to see Shonen hurrying towards them. It would surely help if Elfish’s friends rallied round.

Unfortunately, Elfish’s torments were not yet over. Shonen had not come to rally round.

“I’ve just been talking to Mo,” she exclaimed. “He still says you don’t know a fund-raiser. He says you can’t help my theatre group. He says you made it all up. Is this true?”

Deep in the misery of defeat and taken by surprise, Elfish found herself unable to lie.

“Yes,” she said, without expression.

Shonen turned white and spun on her heel, rushing to vomit in the toilet. Elfish immediately found herself confronted by an angry-looking May and Gail.

“Gail says Chevon isn’t moving out of your house and I won’t be able to live there!” shouted May at the top of her voice.

“It’s true,” said Elfish.

“And Mo tells me you’ve never even met Adam,” yelled Gail. “And the talk of benefit gigs for the magazine is a lie.”

Elfish’s eyes were glazing over. Her reply was too quiet to be heard but it was obvious from her demeanour that she was indeed admitting to lying.

There was no letup. Shonen returned from the toilet to join the others in shouting at her. Elfish quailed. Previously she had been prepared to face down these people when the moment came, confident that once her dream was fulfilled she would have the strength to ignore their fury. Now she could not. Her strength and spirit were both dripping away, leaving her empty inside. She could feel her filth and hunger, and her body was protesting violently about her long period of tension, and drug and alcohol abuse.

Aisha strode up. To anyone familiar with her she had the look of a woman who had managed to control her agoraphobia just long enough to leave the house but knew that it would defeat her before she got back. As she approached, her very limbs were shaking and her face was beginning to distort.

“Where’s Mory?” she demanded. “Where is he? He should be here by now.”

Elfish felt unable to answer.

“Is he coming? Mo says you didn’t even speak to him.”

Elfish shook her head, and was forced to endure a fresh torrent of abuse. Aisha, Shonen, Gail and May were all now filled with hate for the woman who had led them on with falsehoods. The room went quiet so that everyone around could hear.

Casaubon, fresh from talking to Mo, marched over to confront Elfish. She saw him coming and felt like an animal trapped in a snare. He pointed a drumstick at her and demanded to know if she had really been in touch with Marcia or was this just another of her lies? When it became obvious that it was, Casaubon’s rage was so immediate and violent that Elfish shrank from him and reached backwards to take her brother’s hand. Casaubon was very large and Elfish was frightened.

“You fucking little bitch,” screamed Casaubon, apparently driven completely mad by the shattered hope of Marcia returning to him. “I could ram this drumstick down your throat! You think you can just lie to people and get them to do what you want and that’s all right? I’ll kill you for this, Elfish!”

Casaubon, May, Shonen, Aisha and Gail clustered round the small figure of Elfish and screamed at her. The power of the positive transformation that had been wrought on them all was as nothing compared to the fury they displayed as their dreams crashed around their feet before flying with jeers and mockery to lie dormant, wasted and never to be fulfilled, somewhere on the unreachable surface of the moon.

In the face of this assault Elfish crumbled. She turned to face her brother.

“Help me,” she said.

Unfortunately, her brother was no longer there. Aran, unable to withstand such violent emotions, had deserted her. He was nowhere to be seen.

At this betrayal by her brother Elfish’s spirit collapsed completely and she hung her head and started to cry. While her accusers stood around still screaming at her and the audience listened in with enjoyment, she cried and cried in a public humiliation the like of which had rarely been seen or even imagined by anyone present.

As it seemed that there was now to be no support act playing, the woman behind the mixing desk placed a tape in her machine and Sonic Youth’s “Bad Moon Rising” thundered through the speakers.

With their fury still intact but their words for expressing it spent, Shonen, Aisha, Casaubon, May and Gail walked a little distance away then stood together in a knot, still casting evil glances at Elfish. Other onlookers also began to move away from her. They did not wish to find themselves too close to someone so widely condemned and now reduced to the universally dreaded phenomenon of crying in public.

Over in a corner Mo and his band laughed and laughed, and made raucous comments about what Mo might demand from Elfish, should she ever stop crying for long enough to grant it.