Banquet for the Damned

'That's Glasgow. St Andrews is different. It's a jewel. Eliot… Mr Coldwell has told me all about it. There'll be no more scallies trying to nick our guitars up there, mate. You should be grateful. Imagine just turning up and looking for a room stinking of the War Wagon with frizzy hair. They'd drop us right back on the border.'

Tom starts to laugh. It is the same conversation that has replayed throughout the last month. Shaky supports holding the escape tunnel open. 'Sure, sure,' Tom says. 'But why couldn't we just stay at his house?'

'Who would want to live with us, man? Come on, get real. He has enough work to do: the academic stuff and his second book.'

'Do you think he will let us read it?'

'I don't know. I mean, I'll ask.'

Tom gazes past Dante to the carpark outside. 'I tell you, buddy, the other thing that's weird, is him and his bird liking our album. I mean he's an old guy. A philosopher.'

'So? He's flattered. His book was written fifteen years before we were born and we want to do a concept album on it.'

'Yeah, but it's rock music. Does he even know who the Stones are?'

'That's irrelevant. He knows we have a goal. A need to transcend all of this. That's what Banquet for the Damned is about. Our record will show it's still valid. Timeless. It can appeal to a man in his twenties today, or someone born in Eliot's generation.'

Tom nods. 'Yeah, and I'll tell you something. When the second record is released, if the critics write us off again, I'm off to London with a pistol in my belt. They fuckin' killed us.'

'They killed him too.'

'Did we waste our time?' he asks Tom at a motorway service station near Carlisle. Because now it's his turn for doubt. The closer they get to Scotland the more ludicrous the whole expedition begins to feel. It's choking and he can't keep it down.

Tom fiddles with the zip of his jeans, having just returned from the gents'. 'With what?'

'With the band.'

'Where did that come from?'

'Driving in the slow lane at fifty miles an hour, where the caravans overtake you. Gives a man a lot of time to think.'

'How's the wagon doing?'

'OK. Seventeen to the gallon and the bearing is holding out.'

Tom taps a cigarette into his hand from the red and white packet he keeps tucked under the sleeve of his T-shirt. He flicks the cigarette into the air with his thumb and then catches it between his teeth on the way down. He rolls it between his incisors before embracing the filter with his lips. 'Materially, it was a joke. Blowing our own money like that. Personally, it was a huge achievement. We're just ahead of our time.'

Dante smiles. After shuffling further up the Land Rover's bonnet, he gazes about the carpark, takes a long drag on his Marlboro and points at the surroundings. 'Doesn't this just get to you, though? I'm twenty-six and still in fancy dress. I don't have a pot to piss in. Look over there at that couple in the BMW. They're what, our age? She probably got that tan in the Maldives. Just look at them. Plenty of disposable income. Great jobs. Fucking home owners. Mate, we've got one mobile phone between us and it's been out of credit for two months.'

Tom shakes his head for the entire time Dante speaks. 'Man, I hate it when you talk like this.'

'But what if we never get anywhere, if this Scotland thing is a mistake, if the second album dies a death? We have nothing, we're nobody, we're mediocre, exactly what we've been trying to avoid.'

'Buddy, if that guy over there with the Beamer took one peek into our lives, he'd trade places in a flash.'

'Piss off,' Dante says and grins, secretly adoring the fact that he's kick-started Tom along the familiar path of reassurance he can't do without.

'Sure he would. Think of the girls. And the gigs. We're fuckin' rock stars. What about that darling in the red dress at the Rock Café? That one night you had with her is worth any BMW.'

Dante grins.

Tom slaps his thighs. 'We're on the road, baby! Shooting up to Scotland with a bag of pot, two guitars and a prayer. We've got edge. More edge than you can shake a stick at. Have we ever gone hungry, not had a smoke, or good company, and a few cool tunes?'

Laughing, Dante looks through the grimy Land Rover windscreen at the plastic bags containing every thing they own in the world. 'It's a mockery, man.'

Tom laughs. 'Now you mention it, let's just end it right here. Who in their right mind would drive this piece-of-shit four hundred miles to hang out with some old bloke they've never met? It's one long explosion from start to finish.'

'But it always sounds so rock'n'roll when you say it.'

'M90, M9, who gives a…'

'Tom, we've put about fifty miles on the clock, and that's about a grand's worth of fuel in this shitbox. All you had to do was say "right" back there before Edinburgh.'

'Oh come on, there were like six different lanes, and fifty signs with arrows going all over the place. My compass is all screwed up.'

'You're fucking useless.'

'Gimme a break. It's this bloody tank. My arse cannot take another minute of it.'

'You're a waste of fucking space.'

'And the stink of petrol is giving me a headache. Man, we're getting poisoned. That battery should have a cover. It gives off explosive fumes or something.'

Dante watches Tom flick his Zippo lighter open to spark up another cigarette. He begins to laugh.

'What you laughing at?'

Ignoring Tom, he leans forward across the steering wheel to gaze at the sky. 'It's beautiful. Look at that sky. Don't you feel we're getting somewhere?'

'Sure, never doubted it for a minute. It's you I worry about.'

'I was only thinking out loud.'

'Yeah, well no more of it. We are going to be in St Andrews. Man, that's in another country. In a different dimension. Just think of the ocean and the beach. There's a ruined castle, and all those cute student chicks. It's going to be so cool.'

Dante nods his head in approval and opens a packet of chocolate buttons while gripping the steering wheel with his knees. They pass a can of Cherry Coke between them and Tom lights another cigarette before leaning across to place it on Dante's bottom lip. 'Cheers,' Dante says, and relaxes into his seat, daring to steer the Wagon with one hand. 'There's something I'm curious about, Tom.'

'Oh shit. What are you, a homo?'

'No,' he replies, smiling, and flicks his fringe out of his eyes. 'But don't knock it until you've tried it.' Tom's mirth hisses between his teeth and stabs through the cigarette smoke that gathers around his face. Killing his smile, Dante says, 'We tell each other everything, right?'

'Right,' Tom says, frowning.

'Well, there's one thing that doesn't sit right with me. We've been incurable romantics since school. Always looking for the Muse.'

'Fussy means less and settling is forbidden, or so we used to say.'

'You used to say. I never had the bone structure to be so arrogant.'

Tom chuckles.

'But you had her,' Dante says.

'Who?'

'Don't give me that who crap. You had Imogen. You should have dropped me like a hot coal and lived happily ever after.'

'You're so sweet on her. You should have gone out with her,' Tom says, quietly. He looks away and out of the window and Dante cannot see his face.

He grips the steering wheel tighter than he needs to. He clears his throat. 'I'm being objective. Come on, I have some integrity. I would never have fooled around with her.'

'That was low.'

Dante changes gear down to third to round a tight corner. The face of Punky, their last and best drummer, enters both minds. Tom split the band apart by sleeping with Punky's girlfriend — and it was the best line-up they'd ever managed to assemble. 'Tom, I'm not having a go, believe me, but Imogen is a doll. So why are you sitting next to me in the War Wagon, driving four hundred miles away from perfection?'