Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar

have important things to do this afternoon.”

    â€œHave another pint,” said Tula. “You’re so busy these days we never see you. Play some pool.”
    Elfish was a fine pool player with a gentle touch, capable of imparting backspin or sidespin to the cue ball to bring it back into position, a feat beyond the abilities of most part-time bar room players. With her leather jacket and motorbike boots she looked good at the table, which she knew.
    Playing pool and drinking was fine but afterwards she fell asleep at home and did not wake up until three in the morning. She cursed herself. She had meant to visit May. Now another day had slipped by and she had not made the progress she should. How was it that a person with her iron determination could be so easily distracted? She was engulfed by the overwhelmingly gloomy thought that she might turn out like everyone else and let her dreams evaporate into nothing. Even now they might be flying up to land on the moon.
    She walked up and down her room reading Shakespeare and found that she was unable to take in a single line. She cursed Romeo and Juliet for being a remarkably stupid play written in remarkably stupid language. Depression set in. In the middle of the night her prospects of success seemed remote. There was too much for her to do. Unable to get back to sleep Elfish lay on her bed and felt bleak.

twenty-six
    AS FAR AS John Mackie could remember, he had lit a candle in church for his sister every day for the past fifty years. These candles lay next to an altar in his local Catholic church. They were small and white, encased in thin metal. Beside them there was a box to put money in. Each candle cost fifteen pence.
    He was now sixty. He had been ten and his sister eight when they were evacuated from wartime Britain as passengers on a ship to Canada.
    The ship was torpedoed and sank quickly. Many people died, including his sister. John Mackie’s last memory of her was the sight of her long dark hair drifting away from him in the water while he clawed his way frantically towards her. A wave had separated them and he never saw her again. He had been dragged aboard a lifeboat, semi-conscious, but his sister was never found. This had spoiled his life.
    He now ran a secondhand music store in Brixton and was doing badly. For the past ten years he had been fighting a losing battle with the large and modern secondhand store up the road. Their window was packed full of guitars and amplifiers, synthesisers, samplers, sequencers and modern recording equipment, while his was a fairly sorry mix of guitars, banjos, cheap effects boxes and secondhand cassettes that no one wanted.

    Anyone with money requiring good equipment would go uptown to buy it new in Denmark Street and anyone short of cash who wanted to choose from a wide variety of goods would go to the other secondhand store. This left John Mackie with few customers.
    Standing quietly behind the counter, he started slightly as Elfish entered. He was used to the strangely clad youth of Brixton entering his shop, these being some of the people with very little money who were likely to be his customers, but the sight of Elfish’s small figure swamped by her vast, metal-decorated leather jacket still took him by surprise, particularly as her face was almost entirely hidden behind her beaded hair. When she stood at the counter her beads rested on the stud and ring which pierced her nose. She brushed her hair back, revealing her face, which was very dirty. John Mackie felt uncomfortable.
    Elfish asked if she could see a guitar that was hanging in the window. There was very little room in the shop, and bringing out the guitar, plugging it into an amplifier and getting it round Elfish’s neck was something of a struggle.
    Elfish strummed it to see if it was in tune, and then picked out the rhythm of “Green River Blues,” a very old tune. John Mackie recognised this tune and was surprised to find