Friday

Friday by Chris Green

I am walking through a churchyard in rural Devon when I come across a plain gravestone which simply reads, Mark Friday, 1952– 2020. While you do not often get a lot of detail on headstones, it strikes me that although Mark Friday seems an interesting name, here we are told nothing about him. No family information, place names or epitaph to remember him by. Perhaps there is a reason for this. Perhaps there has been a family bust-up. But still, it seems to be crying out for a few words to shed some light on the life that Mark may have lived. So, on the basis that Mark lived through a period of great change, let’s take a look.

June 1970

Mark Friday is eighteen and like many others of his generation has not given any serious thought to what to do with his life. Plans are not cool. Plans are for straights. Something will land in his lap when the time comes; when the world realises how talented he is. Perhaps he’ll be a rock star. He has learnt the words to Gimme Shelter and on a good day can play Purple Haze so it’s at least recognisable. And he has written four of his own songs. There’s one called Twenty Twenty that he’s particularly proud of.

Mark is sprawling on a pile of cushions in a room painted in paisley patterns. Although this is rural Devon and it is hot outside, the windows are closed and a haze of blue smoke hangs in the air. As soon as a joint nears its end, someone rolls another. People drift in and drift out without ceremony, but while they are here, they roll a joint. This is an unspoken house rule. Mark has only recently boarded the metaphorical starship and is still a little disorientated by space, but the feeling of strangeness seems to him an altogether pleasant one.

Ummagumma is playing. Ummagumma is one of three LPs played in random rotation, along with Electric Ladyland and Trout Mask Replica. None are ever returned to their sleeves. Sometimes Electric Ladyland takes a turn or The White Album, although this is badly scratched on side two and sticks on Bungalow Bill. ‘What did you kill, what did you kill,’ ad infinitum. In the Court of the Crimson King too is no longer playable. These are not people that take care of their records. Led Zeppelin 2 completes the collection but this never leaves its sleeve. Led Zeppelin are too popular and therefore uncool. The cover is just used for rolling joints on. Gold Leb is around at the moment, but Mark has a chunk of Nepalese Black, which he is saving for later.

Ummagumma is the best one for astral travelling, Mark thinks, especially Astronomy Domine. Pink Floyd are his favourite band. In between conversations with his fellow conspirators about mystic discovery, thought control and the brain police, Mark has the hots for Vanessa. Vanessa is about five feet ten and has recently arrived from the coast, or was it the moon? Short-term memory loss is a frequent problem. She came through the door, or was it the bathroom window, with a denim tote bag, an acoustic guitar, and a kite and said, ‘Hi. I’m Vanessa. I’ve come to stay.’ She has taken her jeans off now to be more comfortable, she says and is sitting in her pants, but no one seems to have taken much notice except Mark. She is a Sagittarius.

The old cottage they have blagged off a well-meaning squire farmer for a minimal rent is called Far Out. He seemed glad to be rid of it. The furniture they have managed to gather consists of saggy mattresses, mismatched cushions and rugs, and a beaten-up old dresser or two, but it has electricity and running water and the cottage is surprisingly big. They have painted the place out in bright colours and quirky illustrations to cheer it up and put a friendly sign outside to attract travellers from afar. Quasar arrived yesterday or maybe it was last week (time disorientation is a frequent problem) in a jet-black left-hand drive VW camper with runic symbols stencilled on the sides and is now asleep on a rug upstairs. As sleep seems to be something of a last resort in this world, Mark thinks that Quasar must have come a long way. He suspects he may have even come from outer space. Anything is possible here at Far Out.

June 1994

Stacey Looker is driving to see a client in her GTE. She is listening to Nevermind. She likes Nirvana because Kurt Cobain killed himself with a gun. ‘I swear that I don’t have a gun,’ he is singing. The song is Come As You Are, recorded four years before he shot himself. Stacey is thirty-four but on the phone, she says she is twenty-eight. She is five feet ten but does not draw attention to her height. She is a dress size too big, through habitual overindulgence, but on the phone describes herself as nicely curved and calls herself Luna Moonlight. She is Luna Moonlight now in her short skirt and black stockings as she drives too fast down country lanes towards the place with the unpronounceable name. She describes her periodic amphetamine weight management programme as seeing Billy. She has seen Billy twice today. The GTE has a digital display speedo and she amuses herself by watching the orange numbers soar as she puts her foot down.

Her mobile phone rings. It is Ben from the agency. She does not know who Ben is and Ben does not know who she is. They have, as far as she is aware, never met. Ben phones her up at her home to let her know the telephone numbers of prospective clients. She then calls them to arrange a time and place and after she has done the business she sends banknotes in an envelope to a PO Box. Ben is phoning her now on her mobile to tell her that the number the caller gave for this job does not check out with the information on his database. He says he has been trying to call her for ages. But these are the early days of mobile phones and there is poor coverage in rural areas, and none at all in many parts of Wales.

Luna is apprehensive now. She does not know whether to go on or turn back. Some of the people in small Welsh villages have unusual sexual preferences. But, of course, there is the money. And what’s the worst that can happen? A few bruises maybe. ‘I love myself better than you,’ sings Kurt Cobain. The song is On a Plain. This is Stacey’s favourite. She turns it up and drives on, faster now.

June 1970

Mark gets up and turns the record over. His mouth is dry. No one ever makes tea or coffee in Far Out. Perhaps there is none. Or if there is, there is almost certainly no milk or sugar. He is hungry. He is sure that there is nothing in the kitchen, other than some sunflower seeds, some shrivelled carrots and a bag of flour. He has a vague recollection he checked the kitchen for comestibles earlier, or maybe it was yesterday. Nourishment is not the prime concern for the seasoned space traveller. The last time someone cooked was he thinks when Rollo made the acid pie, with the purple acid. This, Mark reckons, was three days ago. It certainly rocked the starship. The whole universe seemed to be melting.

No one in the house has done any shopping for as long as he can remember, other than the occasional run to the garage for pasties and crisps in Ben’s 100E van. The nearest shop is four miles away, and Ben went off somewhere yesterday in the van with Rabbit. And of course, Quasar is upstairs asleep, dreaming of matter and antimatter. Mark hopes someone will arrive soon with some chocolate. All things must pass and people do have the habit of dropping in unexpectedly in this haphazard corner of the cosmos.

‘Go with the flow,’ Syd keeps telling him. ‘Light is light and shadow is shadow, like yin and yang. When you’re meant to go up, go up to the highest point and when you’re meant to go down, go down to the lowest point. Sometimes there is no flow. If there is no flow, then be still and wait for the flow to begin again. But never resist the flow.’ Syd along with Stoner was the first to arrive at Far Out. It was Syd who came up with the name because it was a cool place and it was literally a long way from anywhere.

Mark sits down again, next to Vanessa. Marvin, who recently arrived from California, or was it Andromeda, hands him a fat spliff. Mark takes a greedy pull on it and feels revived. As Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun swirls around his consciousness he feels the solar wind and conjures up kaleidoscopic daydreams.

June 1994

As the GTE powers its way through the Welsh hills, Stacey reflects on the time before she did all this running around the country. The ennui of daily repetition as she sat at home raising children and watching Pebble Mill, Neighbours, repeats of Dallas and mindless children’s programmes while Roy was out fixing boilers to bring home the bacon. Before the fire and before Holly and Polly were taken into care.

She remembers too, endlessly taking advantage of Roy’s naivety and trust. When early on in their relationship she had told Roy that she had a deep dark secret, he had said that it didn’t matter. So she had never told him about it. As she changes down into third to overtake a procession of slower cars, she remembers Roy finally accepting that she needed a break from twinkling little stars and the wheels on the bus going round and round. And that she liked to go out in the evenings, leaving him to clear up and put her girls to bed. And leaving him to do all the housework at weekends, while she went to the hairdressers or shopping on the High Street for shoes she never wore. Resistant at first, he did not seem to mind that she frequently came home noisily in the early hours because at least it meant she was home. He may even have realised that she had a string of lovers. Surely it must have been obvious that she did not go out dressed like she did to go to evening classes or girly chats over a bottle of Liebfraumilch. And the messages men left for her on the answering machine must have hinted at her infidelity. Not that he ever complained on the occasions she woke him in the middle of the night to give her a good seeing to when her client had been a disappointment. She wasn’t all bad and they did still have good times.

What she is doing now she feels is not so very different from what she has always done, except that now she gets paid for doing it. And she loves the roar of the engine and the squeal of brakes as she negotiates a blind bend in the middle of the road and narrowly misses a cattle truck.

June 1984

Mark is sitting in a coffee shop in Amsterdam with his friend, Ben. They are a little drunk and a little stoned. A blues band is playing Red House. Mark has had an argument with his girlfriend, Sasha. She has stormed off, and Ben’s girlfriend, Laura has gone after her. The four of them are in Amsterdam for a stress-free break from their nine-to-five jobs. After the initial regret about their argument, Mark feels relieved that Sasha has gone. Something was in the air between them all day. Nothing that he said or did met with her approval. Perhaps Sasha is premenstrual, he thinks. Why else would she get upset about the films he had bought, or that he had suggested a show in De Wallen instead of a meal at an Indonesian restaurant? They will make up later, he expects.

He apologises to Ben and orders two more pilsners and Ben lights a spliff to cool things down. They talk about Piet Mondrian, avant-garde cinema and Dutch taxi drivers. Mark has his eye now on a babe with long dark hair who is with another girl at the other end of the bar. She is dressed in black and must be about five foot ten and is wearing high heels. He remarks to Ben she reminds him of Vanessa. Ben agrees that she does at this moment in time present a tempting alternative to Sasha, but says that he never met Vanessa. Mark tries to jog his memory, reminding him of the crazy days all those years ago at Far Out. Ben suggests that perhaps Vanessa may have arrived after he had gone off with Rabbit to work on the oil rigs. Whatever happened to Rabbit? they wonder. Or Stoner? Or Jesus? And what about Dave and Dave Too? Do you remember when they used to sell acid from the hamburger van? Ben asks. And what about Quasar? With his monologues about quantum theory. And ley lines. And orgone energy. Quasar was, they agree, a nutcase.

The band starts to play a slow traditional twelve-bar blues. Ben goes off in search of the toilet. The girl in black comes over flicking her hair back seductively as she does so. She produces a thin spliff from her handbag and asks Mark for a light. He swallows nervously and digs deep into his pocket for his lighter. Her name she says is Stacey. Mark notices that she does not have a drink. They strike up a conversation about cocktails and he orders her a tequila sunrise. She says that she and her friend come to Amsterdam four or five times a year and that there is no place like it for getting your rocks off. She rubs her hand slowly down her thigh. Mark tells her it is his first visit. Having said it, he feels at a disadvantage and a little apprehensive. He is more accustomed to being in control of the pickup situation. He is not sure how to react to someone so forward. He looks around for Ben, who has not reappeared. The bar has suddenly become more crowded. A poster advertising Galaxy Coffee Shop catches Mark’s attention.

‘What star sign are you?’ he asks, stuck for something to say.

‘Leo with Leo rising,’ she says. ‘And my moon is in Sagittarius.’

‘A lot of fire there for someone who doesn’t have a lighter.’

Stacey does not seem to wish to pursue the astrological theme. Instead, out of the blue, she says, ‘I expect you’d like to come back to my room and fuck me.’

Mark is taken aback and wonders perhaps if she might be a hooker, but does not want to ask. Sensing his concern, Stacey quickly clears up the misunderstanding. She says she wants to fuck him and giving Mark little chance to decline the offer leads him away by the hand. Her room, she says, is quite close.

June 1988

Quasar is living on the island of Lanzarote in an imposing villa built out of black volcanic stone. To maximise its darkness, the doors and window frames are painted matt black, and the windows are tinted. It is the largest house in the village and it blends in perfectly with the volcanic ash in which it is set but stands out dramatically when viewed against the other buildings nearby, which are uniformly painted white. Jet black sculptures dominate the lunar landscape. Figures with erotically entwined limbs are scattered amongst tenebrous towering cacti, and a black tiled patio hosts a forbidding impression of the angel of death. A tall radio mast stands next to the house and there is an immense satellite dish on the roof between the solar panels and the water storage tanks. A model of the solar system is surrounded by other stellar objects. An astronomical telescope is positioned to catch the light from the stars of the southern sky. The island is reputedly one of the best places in the world for stargazers to view the cosmos.

Quasar keeps himself to himself. To add to the mystique, he wears Arab dress and makes no attempt to learn to speak Spanish. If anyone speaks to him in English too, he pretends not to understand. Given the potential for communication he has with other worlds, perhaps he doesn’t feel the need for crude social intercourse. He works in an underground studio where he plays reverberating electronic music that comes from the bowels of the earth or the outer reaches of the Milky Way.

It is Thursday. A red Mercedes draws up outside Quasar’s gate and a woman in a skimpy red dress steps out. She looks conspicuous in the monochrome setting. She is about five feet ten and is wearing heels. As she makes her way across the picon, a stiff breeze coming in from the Sahara lifts her dress. This is Luna. Dogs bark and an old man outside the historic black and white church down the road makes the sign of the cross. Quasar’s front door opens and Luna disappears inside. Luna will stay for three hours, as she does every Monday and Thursday. The old man crosses himself once more. Set in tradition the people in the village disapprove of Quasar. They view his activities with equal proportions of suspicion and fear. Rumours have circulated among them that he is a Satanist or worse, the devil. Some believe he is a cannibal. Shortly, following the disappearance of a girl from a neighbouring village, the strength of bad feeling towards him will see him deported from the island. By and by he will return to Blighty.

June 2006

Leo is twenty and has just completed the second year of a Creative Writing degree at UWE, Bristol. He has his Dell open and is catching up on his inbox. He is enjoying Belgian cider with a poppy bagel and a kabano sausage with a selection of dips he bought earlier at Morrisons. He sifts through his unsolicited email, the ads to make his business more profitable, cheap software, penis enlargement and Viagra and Cialis. Does everyone get these, he wonders. He pauses to read one or two about summer concerts, before hitting another batch of junk mail. He is not with Vodafone, he doesn’t belong to Badoo, and he has never heard of Quasar. Perhaps it’s a new web browser.

Since he became aware that he had been adopted, Leo has been trying to trace his parents. He discovered that Dave Too and Vanessa were not his real parents when he came home from university for the Easter break to find the house empty and the estate agents board outside, Sold Subject to Contract. He phoned his paternal grandfather in Swindon, who was glad to have someone to talk to about his allotment and the new road they were building outside his house, despite protests from the residents in his street and a letter to his MP. After a chat about his rheumatoid arthritis and NHS waiting lists, Leo managed to get a number for his father.

‘I think there’s been a bit of a rift, young Leo,’ Grandad Too told him. ‘Tread carefully.’

He caught up with his dad, drowning his sorrows in The Dog and Duck. Over a pint and a chaser, followed by a chaser and chaser, Dave Too told him that he and Vanessa had separated, but it didn’t matter because he was not their son anyway. They had he said been meaning to tell him for years, but there never seemed to be a right time to break the news. From the angry exchanges that ensued and a bitter reunion with a tearful Vanessa later the same day in another pub, Leo was only able to deduce that their breakup may have had something to do with an unexpected visit from Dave One as the other Dave was known. With oceans of alcohol now washing through his brain, Leo was unable to establish exactly what the connection was, what had happened, or who was to blame. He left with a feeling of betrayal and abandonment and the conclusion that both parents were selfish and remorseless. The cold light of day only served to strengthen his feeling of detachment and he has had no contact with either of them since.

After returning to uni, Leo has spent hours trawling through internet websites, following links to ever more unconventional source material and has discovered that his real mother may have been called Stacey Looker. And that she may have died in 1994 when she disappeared in mysterious circumstances in Wales. An Astra GTE registered in her name was found abandoned in a local beauty spot, but investigations into her disappearance which briefly occupied the divisional police force were able to draw no conclusions, and the case was closed. His efforts tracing her have drawn a blank. There has been no record of her since 1994. None of the people he has tracked down who knew her has been able to shed any light on the circumstances of her disappearance, although one or two mentioned someone called Ben she was in contact with. Ben, of course, is a common name.

Leo pours another glass of Belgian cider and lights up a half-smoked joint from the ashtray. The World Cup is on the TV. England are playing Sweden, but Leo is not paying much attention. It will probably be a nil-nil draw, he thinks. It often is in these big games with high expectations. He shares a house with three other students, but they are in the Union bar, getting ready to go home for the summer. Leo, having no family home to go back to, thinks he may stay on for a few more weeks.

Leo has also had little success in tracing his real father, the only clue to his identity coming from a report in the archives of the North Devon Gazette and Advertiser from August 1984, about a Mark Friday and a Stacey Looker winning a Karaoke competition in Woolacombe, North Devon singing It Takes Two. Given he was born in April 1985, this would have been the early weeks of his mother’s pregnancy. That Stacey and Mark were at the seaside together in such a below-the-radar resort suggests they must have been pretty cosy at the time. There is a good chance, he feels, that Mark Friday could be his father. Despite Friday not being a common surname, his investigations have produced no trace of Mark. The closest match is a Mike Friday who is 85 years old and in a nursing home in Bognor Regis.

Leo deletes a batch of emails and scrolls down until he gets to one which has the subject, Friday. He feels this could be of significance. It has an attachment, mark01.pdf. Could this be the information he is looking for? This is how things happen in the digital age. He can hardly contain his excitement. What Leo does not know is that it is a Phishing scam and the attachment contains a virus that will cripple his computer and with it destroy all his work including the intricate murder mystery he has been writing about a latter-day hippy and a femme fatale. Without his computer, it may take Leo a while to discover that Mark and Ben have become Facebook friends. His phone does not have the internet and he does not often look at Facebook. The university computers do not allow you to log in. Had he been able to further his investigations, he would have seen that Mark Friday’s profile has him living in Bovey Tracey, Devon. Not a large place. Mark would not be difficult to find.

But there is a strong likelihood that in the interim Leo will get distracted from his search by something else. Like many Humanities students in the noughties, he has a short attention span, and he is at the age when new interests come at you thick and fast.

June 2020

Covid is at its height in Devon. There has been a huge increase of cases. The numbers are simply colossal. Most of the people in Mark’s street are down with it. Although many places are closed, Mark hasn’t been shielding. Isolation is not for him. He has never been a loner. His world is one that requires human contact. He tells himself, if he were to catch Covid he would probably get over it. After all, he is only sixty-eight, and while it would not be true to say he has lived a healthy life or that he eats a healthy diet, he is becoming more health conscious. He takes multivitamins and iron supplements, and since the heart scare, he exercises a little and has given up smoking. He now only drinks five nights a week. He has dry days on Monday and Tuesday. But should he really be out at night on country roads on his Triumph Bonneville so soon after his eye operation?

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