Nirvana Bites Read online

  The irony of my having come for a lowly research job and two and a half hours later giving brusque instructions to the executive producer was lost on Stan. His eyes beseeched me.

  ‘Do you think you can help?’ he implored.

  ‘I’ll damn well do my best,’ I replied. ‘I’ll be in touch in the next day or so.’

  At the door, I paused. ‘By the way, Stan. Why couldn’t they use the production suite for the interviews?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? It was totally wrecked the other day by eco-warriors.’

  3

  I CAME OUT of the Beeb into the watery April sunshine and jumped on to two connecting buses. Anyone who has ever used public transport in this city will testify to what a rare occurrence that is. What with that and the promise of some serious remuneration from Stan, maybe my luck was changing.

  Shit! As I fumbled through my pockets, struggling to make the £I fare and coming up with just enough coins – more brown than silver – I realised the serious flaw in this rosy vision. At no point had Stan and I ever mentioned money, as in would I get any? And, if so, when and how much?

  Even so, life felt good as the bus crossed the river going south towards Peckham and home. ‘Home’ was a one-bedroom, short-life flat in the Nirvana Housing Co-op. Nirvana consisted of three adjoining terraced houses, each converted – if somewhat flimsily – into two flats.

  Advantages of living in a housing co-op:

  1. it is like being part of an extended family

  2. five other people have access to your home, but respect your personal space and will only use your key in an emergency

  3. assorted weirdos and misfits (and I do not exempt myself from these categories) who might otherwise end up homeless, or worse, find a home and a community of sorts

  4. you have some degree of control over your life

  Disadvantages of living in a housing co-op:

  1. the problem with members of an extended family is that you love them dearly, but they also have the power to drive you to hair-tearing distraction

  2. what constitutes an emergency requiring use of your key is surprisingly subjective. To Maggot, who lives downstairs from me, running out of milk would suffice. Whereas to Frank the Wank next door, attack by a sizeable herd of rampaging buffalo armed to the teeth with AK-47s could be dismissed as nothing untoward

  3. the weirdos and sub-culture misfits will probably have nothing more in common with each other than their individual alienation from wider society

  That means the advantages outweigh the disadvantages by four to three, leaving the control bit as crucial. The fact that such a bizarre mix of anarchists, New Agers, eco-warriors and assorted radicals managed to organise anything at all is nothing short of a miracle. To organise rent collection, bill-paying, repairs (if somewhat rudimentary) and an annual party with a cast of hundreds in the enormous communal garden is worthy of massive respect in my book. At one stage, we even thought of declaring ourselves a republic, whereby anyone entering our territory would have their passport stamped with YOU HAVE ENTERED THE STATE OF NIRVANA, but the cost of the rubber stamp defeated us. (Though we pretended it was because we had decided it was reminiscent of imperialism and ideologically unsound.)

  I was pondering all this as I walked down Kirkwood Road and under the railway bridge. I was within sight of sanctuary when I was accosted by a bent figure with bright orange hair.

  ‘Jane. Jane,’ she muttered, clutching at my sleeve with gnarled fingers ending in filthy, yellowing nails.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Vance,’ I sighed, resigned to my fate and not bothering to correct her on my name.

  ‘Someone’s breaking in next door, lovey. Just seen him going in the front window. I’m just going in to call the police.’

  I groaned. ‘Mrs V,’ I said with infinite patience, ‘was he tall and thin, with long hair in a plait?’

  ‘That’s right, lovey. Right low-life by the look of him. Come with me to call the cops.’

  I knew from personal experience that resistance was futile. I allowed myself to be propelled into Mrs V’s shop. (I use the term loosely to describe our next-door neighbour’s establishment.) I took a deep breath of cleanish outside air as she pushed me through the door. Even with that precaution my senses were immediately assailed by a heady olfactory cocktail of nicotine, piss, dog and must.

  Quite why Mrs Vance ran this place was one of the great mysteries of life. It certainly couldn’t have taken more than a few quid a week, if that. She sold milk in bottles – an anachronism in itself – cigarettes from a machine and some ancient bars of chocolate produced before sell-by dates were introduced. In the grip of an uncontrollable fit of the munchies, I had once bought a bar. It was truly horrible. I ate it all. But I didn’t enjoy it. She also had a rail of greasy second-hand clothes. An old-fashioned wooden counter, pock-marked with cigarette burns, ran the width of the shop. Behind it presided Derek, Mrs V’s middle-aged son, who had severe learning difficulties (‘Brain-damaged at birth,’ according to his mother) and Tyson, a sixteen-stone Rottweiler, intended to deter the local kids, who couldn’t resist a target weaker than themselves. In fact Mrs V was far more formidable than the dog. She must have been well into her eighties, with a truly filthy sense of humour. But she was a wily old bird, if somewhat forgetful. She, Derek and Tyson lived behind the shop in a certain degree of squalor. But then who am I to talk?

  I allowed myself to be bobbled along, cork-like, on the inexorable wave of Mrs V’s energy, but when she reached for the phone I took it from her and replaced it on the cradle.

  ‘Stop, Mrs V. We’ve been here before. It’s not a break-in. It’s Robin.’

  ‘I know he’s robbin’, love,’ she squealed. ‘I saw him go in.’

  I groaned. ‘Robin, Mrs V. He’s Nick’s friend.’

  ‘Robbin’. Nickin’. Don’t matter what you call it. I’m calling the police.’

  It took me another ten minutes to convince Mrs V that we knew Robin and that he wasn’t actually breaking into Nick’s flat. Robin had been living in squats for so long that he’d lost the habit of using front doors to get in and out of buildings. What made the process of explaining this to Mrs V so particularly frustrating was that it happened with monotonous regularity as Robin visited at least twice a week and often stayed over.

  I succeeded eventually, though Mrs V still looked dubious. After much soothing and reassurance, I managed to extricate myself and get the key into my own front door. I clattered up the uncarpeted stairs and entered the art installation known as Murder in a Battery Farm. Also known as my hall. When I decided to decorate a couple of years ago, I had painted all the walls white in preference to magnolia – those being the only bulk emulsions Frank the Wank had ripped off during his short stint working at Do It All on the Old Kent Road. I had been so pissed off at his lack of imagination, I had forced him to work an extra shift so he could nick some nice bright gloss, so I wouldn’t feel like I was living in a sterilised igloo. The walls in the hall had been the last to submit. The ceiling was so high and the crumbling plaster so disintegrated, it presented a huge challenge. I had been dolloping paint on an inch thick with a roller tied to a broom handle in an attempt to glue the plaster together. It was exhausting and the effect was fairly hideous. In desperation I had shrieked to Maggot, who was in my bedroom, putting the final touches of Crimson Fire gloss on the door:

  ‘I need help here! I can’t take any more.’

  Mags had burst through the bedroom door with her brush heavily laden with blood-red paint, took one look at me standing on a sodden chair holding a dripping broom aloft and howling like a wounded wolf, and did what any considerate mate would do under the circumstances. She flicked the brush with a flamboyant sweep of her arm. Red paint arced through the air, splattered across my chest and the wall behind me and dripped gruesomely downwards.

  What could I do? I leapt from the chair and seized the brush from the tin of Sunburst Yellow sitting on the floor outside the kitchen. Paint began fl
ying in all directions, magnificent sprays, drools and splatters liberally patterning the walls. There was an extended battle before the tins and our energy had run out. We sank to the floor, breathing heavily and dripping with what looked like egg yolk and gore. I love my hall now.

  I took off the suit I had borrowed for the BBC interview and hung it on a hook on my bedroom door before changing into jeans and a T-shirt. Then I made coffee in the tiny kitchen and carried it through to the front room, where I sank on to the floor cushions. Everything in this room was at floor level – an essential health and safety precaution when you’re around people who drink and smoke as much as my friends: not so far to fall. I picked up a notepad and pen and opened to a clean page. I wrote STAN – AREAS TO INVESTIGATE in bold letters and triple-underlined it. Then I sank back on to the cushions and gazed out of the window.

  One of the best things about my home is that it overlooks the railway line. This means I don’t have to worry about people looking in; I have a view of trees, rising moons and fox families running along the track; and I feel a connectedness to the rest of the world. On the other hand, it can sometimes be tiresome to have every conversation, TV programme and reverie punctuated by the roar of passing trains. But that’s OK. You know, yin and yang and karmic balance and stuff.

  I noticed the light on my answer-machine winking at me. I leaned over and punched the button. The voice of my sister-in-law, Kate filled the room. ‘Straight Kate’ as she was known by the rest of the family.

  ‘Hello, Jenny. Just wondered how the interview went. Oh – and you have hung my suit up properly, haven’t you? Not on a wire hanger, I hope.’

  ‘End of final message,’ my machine cooed in honey tones as I struggled guiltily to my feet to search for a padded hanger.

  Ten minutes of displacement activity later (I took off my earrings, dropped a stud, found it nestled cosily between the floorboards and extricated it with a screwdriver together with a long-lost pound coin, having first failed with a key then a fingernail – now broken) I collapsed back on to the cushions and picked up the notepad again. Perhaps I’d better give Kate a ring first.

  After forty minutes listening to Kate moaning on about something I seemed to have blocked out, I was on the point of a Stan-related revelation when I realised I was hungry. I couldn’t expect to concentrate without a small snack. I knocked up a lentil and vegetable soup thickened with coconut cream, which I had to go out and buy with the pound coin, and then decided to make just a very small loaf of bread to dip into it. While I was cooking, the phone rang but I was at a crucial kneading point and let the machine pick it up.

  Full-bellied and satisfied, I returned to my cushions and punched the button on the machine again. My stomach gave a guilty lurch as I heard Stan’s voice, sounding shaky and subdued.

  ‘Jen. I’m home. I’ve taken a long hot bath. And even though I had to get a new set of staples out of the sponge and the soap, I’m actually feeling a lot better. I just wanted to say how incredibly grateful I am for your help. I don’t know why, but I just somehow feel that with you on my side, I can come through this thing. I spoke to the others and they’ve all promised to keep shtum. I told them I’m having a breakdown and you’re my therapist. And they believed me! Amazing, huh? Anyway, I’m looking forward to hearing how you’re planning on going about sorting this thing out. Speak to you soon.’

  I felt the burden of responsibility weighing heavily on my shoulders. Too heavily. What had I taken on? I needed help. And, wonder of wonders, I could get some. At one time or another, we had all called on the other co-op members to help with some crisis, either personal or political. As far as I knew, no one had ever before asked for help to trace a psychopathic blackmailer with a penchant for office stationery, but I was sure if we worked together we would be up to the challenge.

  I trotted back down the stairs and pounded on Maggot’s door loudly enough to be heard over the sound of Lauryn Hill pounding out of her stereo. The door opened and the frame filled with Maggot’s massive bulk – five feet ten and fifteen stone of solid muscle which strained at the seams of her black T-shirt and African-print trousers. When I first met her, five years ago, she had grown tired of attempting to make her hair ‘flap like a white girl’s’, as she put it. She’d given up on straighteners, curly perms and chemicals and concoctions of all kinds and taken to shaving her head. Six months later, she’d grown equally sick of the way people backed away from her wherever she went, so she’d started to grow locks. The effect was only marginally less intimidating, but at least now it was only the white folks who felt threatened. Which was fine by Maggot. Mags is a counsellor in a drugs project in Brixton, which also makes her the only member of the co-op who holds down a steady job.

  I filled her in briefly on Stan’s – and my – problem, and she reacted with decisive energy, as I’d known she would.

  ‘Right. Emergency meeting,’ she said grimly and reached in for the phone. It never ceased to amaze me that out of a bunch of supposedly politically aware, environmentally conscious radicals, not one of us ever questioned this reliance on the phone to call someone a few yards away on the other side of the wall. We could communicate as easily – and certainly more cheaply – by just knocking on the wall or opening the window and yelling, but we never did. I might bring it up. One day.

  I left the organisation to Mags and returned upstairs to switch the kettle on. Half an hour later an emergency meeting of the Nirvana Housing Co-op convened in my front room. It was customary on such occasions for everyone to bring something, on the grounds that, if it was an emergency, some or all of us may well be in need of comfort.

  I provided the venue, the tea and the crisis. Maggot brought a spliff the size of a leg, but I didn’t get too excited: I knew from bitter experience that she would consume over two-thirds of it in a couple of almighty, lung-blasting drags. The people on either side of her would jostle closer in the hope that what was left would be passed their way. I retreated from the action and sat on the other side of the room, knowing the tension would kill the high anyway. Frank brought a battered pack of digestives, and I wondered fleetingly if Mrs V had started selling biscuits. Nick’s contribution was Robin – which was cheating a bit, but we let it slide. Ali, from the third house, placed a large bowl of unhusked sunflower seeds in the centre of the room like an offering. My heart sank at the thought of the debris that would be the aftermath of their consumption. He nodded silently round the room before folding himself on to the floor in a full lotus that would have made his parents proud – if they ever saw him again. Their patience with their wayward son, who seemed so intent on subverting every value they held dear, had finally run out a couple of years ago when he’d arrived at their house during Ramadan wearing a ripped black T-shirt and jeans and sporting a tattoo of an anarchist symbol on his forehead.

  The only one not there was Gaia, who lived downstairs from Ali, with her seven cats, two rabbits and a hamster. Gaia was our resident earth mother. Her parents were hippies – the first time round. They were into peace and love, but by all accounts were too stoned to lavish much of the latter on Gaia. They were retired now and lived in a croft in the Outer Hebrides. Gaia had taken on many of their ideals and updated them by immersing herself into all things New Age. She and Mags often clashed over what Mags described as Gaia’s ‘pick ‘n’ mix spirituality’ (when she was feeling generous) and her ‘cultural imperialism’ (when she wasn’t). Anyway, Gaia was apparently out at some moon-worship, world-healing event involving crystals, herbs, ancient Chinese mysticism and Native American rituals.

  I had the floor, and told Stan’s story in full Technicolor detail. We had a no-interruption rule, so apart from my voice there was complete silence in the room – with the exception of packet-rustling, biscuit-chewing, tea-slurping, spliff-sucking, sunflower-seed-husking and train roaring. I was pleased to see Mags had picked up my notepad and was making notes on the virgin page.

  I finished and looked round the room expectantly.
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  ‘Right,’ said Mags with characteristic energy. ‘This is what we’ve got.’ She took another huge drag on the spliff, peered at the roach between her fingertips and then tossed it into my date palm – much to the despair of Frank and Nick on either side of her. ‘Whoever is messing with Stan is using his S&M persona to put the pressure on his straight life. In other words, they know his identity in both worlds. OK. So what do they want? There have been no demands. No threats. I’d have thought if they were softening him up for blackmail they’d have made their move by now.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I interjected, unwilling to let Mags take over too far on the super-sleuth front. ‘So, the way I see it, that leaves two possibilities. Either this is personal, someone from the Scene that he really pissed off. And you have to admit the harassment has some obvious sadistic hallmarks.’

  Everyone winced. The fish episode had really got to them.

  ‘Only if that was so, I would’ve expected Stan to have worked that out himself. Or, someone is trying to push Stan to the edge – and succeeded today. But why? Who would have something to gain from Stan cracking up?’

  ‘Further to that,’ Robin interrupted eagerly, ‘It may be pertinent to consider whether the intended victim is Stanley, or Catherine.’

  Robin and Nick might look like a pair of crusty old hippies, but their origins betray them whenever they open their mouths. Those accents – the plummiest this side of Dulwich Village – could only be the result of a public-school education. But no one controls the situation they’re born into, so we are all kind enough not to draw attention to it. Not too often anyway.

  Robin lowered his head and peered with great intensity at the toe protruding from his dilapidated right trainer. ‘Actually, I just might be in a position to do a spot of research on that front,’ he mumbled. ‘My mother happens to be the chair of the local Conservative association in Catherine Highshore’s constituency. They’re good friends.’ He hunched his bony shoulders in an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry, folks,’ he murmured. ‘But it just might be useful, you know?’