All right, maybe three cups. But it had bits of apple floating in it. Nothing serious has bits of apple floating in it.
Wayne started with a few hot numbers to get them stomping. I’m speaking metaphorically here, you understand. None of this boogie on down stuff, all you could hear was people not being as young as they used to be.
Now, I’ve already said Wayne wasn’t exactly cut out for the business, and that night – last night – he was worse than usual. He kept mumbling, and staring at the dancers. He mixed the records up. He even scratched one. Accidentally, I mean – the only time I’ve ever seen Wayne really angry, apart from the Greebo business, was when scratch music came in.
It would have been very bad manners to cut in, so at the first break I went up to him and, let me tell you, he was sweating so much it was dropping on to the mixer.
‘It’s that bloke on the floor,’ he said, ‘the one in the flares. ‘
‘Methuselah?’ I said.
‘Don’t muck about. The black silk suit with the rhinestones. He’s been doing John Travolta impersonations all night. Come on, you must have noticed. Platform soles. Got a silver medallion as big as a plate. Skull mask. He was over by the door.’
I hadn’t seen anyone like that. Well, you’d remember, wouldn’t you?
Wayne’s face was frozen with fear. ‘You must have!’
‘So what, anyway?’
‘He keeps staring at me!’
I patted his arm. ‘Impressed by your technique, old son,’ I said.
I took a look around the hall. Most people were milling around the punch now, the rascals. Wayne grabbed my arm.
‘Don’t go away!’
‘I was just going out for some fresh air.’
‘Don’t…’ He pulled himself together. ‘Don’t go. Hang around. Please.’
‘What’s up with you?’
‘Please, John! He keeps looking at me in a funny way!’
He looked really frightened. I gave in. ‘Okay. But point him out next time.’
I let him get on with things while I tied to neaten up the towering mess of plugs and adapters that was Wayne’s usual contribution to electrical safety. If you’ve got the kind of gear we’ve got – okay, had – you can spend hours working on it. I mean, do you know how many different kinds of connectors … all right.
In the middle of the next number Wayne hauled me back to the decks.
‘There! See him? Right in the middle!’
Well, there wasn’t. There were a couple of girls dancing with each other, and everyone else were just couples who were trying to pretend the Seventies hadn’t happened. Any rhinestone cowboys in that lot would have stood out like a strawberry in an Irish stew. I could see that some tact and diplomacy were called for at this point.
‘Wayne,’ I said, ‘I reckon you’re several coupons short of a toaster.’
‘You can’t see him, can you?’
Well, no. But . , .
… since he mentioned it , . .
… I could see the space.
There was this patch of floor around the middle of the hall which everyone was keeping clear of. Except that they weren’t avoiding it, you see, they just didn’t happen to be moving into it. It was just sort of accidentally there. And it stayed there. It moved around a bit, but it never disappeared.
All right, I know a patch of floor can’t move around. Just take my word for it, this one did.
The record was ending but Wayne was still in control enough to have another one spinning. He faded it up, a bit of an oldie that they’d all know.
‘Is it still there?’ he said, staring down at the desk.
‘It’s a bit closer,’ I said. ‘Perhaps it’s after a spot prize.’
… I wanna live forever …
‘That’s right, be a great help.’
… people will see me and cry …
There were quite a few more people down there now, but the empty patch was still moving around, all right, was being avoided, among the dancers.
I went and stood in it.
It was cold. It said: GOOD EVENING.
The voice came from all around me, and everything seemed to slow down. The dancers were just statues in a kind of black fog, the music a low rumble.
‘Where are you?’
BEHIND YOU.
Now, at a time like this the impulse is to turn around, but you’d be amazed at how good I was at resisting it.
‘You’ve been frightening my friend,’ I said.
I DID NOT INTEND TO.
‘Push off.’
THAT DOESN’T WORK, I AM AFRAID.
I did turn around then. He was about seven feet tall in his, yes, his platform soles. And, yes, he wore flares, but somehow you’d expect that. Wayne had said they were black but that wasn’t true. They weren’t any colour at all, they were simply clothes-shaped holes into Somewhere Else. Black would have looked blinding white by comparison. He did look a bit like John Travolta from the waist down, but only if you buried John Travolta for about three months.
It really was a skull mask. You could see the sting.
‘Come here often, do you?’
I AM ALWAYS AROUND.
‘Can’t say I’ve noticed you.’ And I would have done. You don’t meet many seven-foot, seven-stone people every day, especially ones that walked as though they had to think about every muscle movement in advance and acted as though they were alive and dead at the same time, like Cliff Richard.
YOUR FRIEND HAS AN INTERESTING CHOICE OF MUSIC.
‘Yes. He’s a collector, you know.’
I KNOW. COULD YOU PLEASE INTRODUCE ME TO HIM?
‘Could I stop you?’
I DOUBT IT.
All right, perhaps four cups. But the lady serving said there was hardly anything in it at all except orange squash and home-made wine, and she looked a dear old soul. Apart from the Wolfman mask, that is.
But I know all the dancers were standing like statues and the music was just a faint buzz and there were these, all these blue and purple shadows around everything. I mean, drink doesn’t do that.
Wayne wasn’t affected. He stood with his mouth open, watching us.
‘Wayne,’ I said, ‘this is-‘
A FRIEND.
‘Whose?’ I said, and you could tell I didn’t take to the person, because his flares were huge and he wore one of those silver identity bracelets on his wrist, the sort you could moor a battleship with, and they look so posey; the fact that his wrist was solid bone wasn’t doing anything to help, either. I kept thinking there was a conclusion I ought to be jumping to, but I couldn’t quite get a running start. My head seemed to be full of wool.
EVERYONE’S, he said, SOONER OR LATER. I UNDERSTAND YOU’RE SOMETHING OF A COLLECTOR.
‘Well, in a small-‘ said Wayne.
I GATHER YOU’RE ALMOST AS KEEN AS I AM, WAYNE.
Wayne’s face lit up. That was Wayne, all right. I’ll swear if you shot him he’d come alive again if it meant a chance to talk about his hobby, sorry, his lifetime’s work.
‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘Are you a collector?’
ABSOLUTELY.
Wayne peered at him. ‘We haven’t met before, have we?’ he said. ‘I go to most of the collectors’ meetings. Were you at the Blenheim Record Fest and Auction?’
I DON’T RECALL. I GO TO SO MANY THINGS.
‘That was the one where the auctioneer had a heart attack.’
OH. YES. I SEEM TO REMEMBER POPPING IN, JUST FOR A FEW MINUTES.
‘Very few bargains there, I thought.’
OH. I DON’T KNOW. HE WAS ONLY FORTY-THREE,
All right, inspector. Maybe six drinks. Or maybe it wasn’t the drinks at all. But sometimes you get the feeling, don’t you, that you can see a little way into the future? Oh, you don’t. Well, anyway. I might not have been entirely in my right mind but I was beginning to feel pretty uncomfortable about all this. Well, anyone would. Even you.
‘Wayne,’ I said. ‘Stop right now. If you concentrate, he’ll go away. Settle down a bit. Please. Take a deep breath. This is all wrong.’
The brick wall on the other side of me paid more attention. I know Wayne when he meets fellow collectors, They have these weekend rallies. You see them in shops. Strange people. But none of them as strange as this one. He was dead strange.
‘Wayne!’
They both ignored me. And inside my mind bits of my brain were jumping up and down, shouting and pointing, and I couldn’t let myself believe what they were saying
OH, I’VE GOT THEM ALL, he said, turning back to Wayne, ELVIS PRESLEY, BUDDY HOLLY, JIM MORRISON, JIMI HENDRIX, JOHN LENNON…
‘Fairly wide spread, musically,’ said Wayne. ‘Have you got the complete Beatles?’
NOT YET
And I swear they started to talk records. I remember Mr Friend saying he’d got the complete seventeenth-, eighteenth-and nineteenth-century composers. Well, he would, wouldn’t he?