Chris looked back at his boots and felt down his left trouser leg to the buttoned utility pocket. With luck this still contained some water and a cereal bar left from a recent walk on Sussex’s considerably-less-dramatic-than-they-sound Fire Hills.
Pete shot him a look as Chris wrestled with the crinkly noise of the packaging.
‘Right. I think we’re safe to move out. Let’s try to rejoin the armoured division,’ – he gently unfolded an A4 inkjet-printed map – ‘they should be at the assembly stage, just south of Thousand Pound Pond—’
‘You mean beyond those trees?’
Pete’s look was tired, parental and corrective, but he just nodded.
Chris jumped up.
‘Great! Let’s do this, Mein Herr! This bugger all has been going on for hours.’
Seeing no one nearby, the stillness of the empty mansion only interrupted by muted tones of distant yelling, the men dashed forward in a series of diagonals, partial cover afforded by two damaged jeeps that had collided in front of the tea shop. The left side door of one was thrust up into the air at a broken angle; on it three words: ‘Группа нападения четыре’.
They pulled up a little breathless by the toilet block before the path that had once led to tourist parking.
‘We can’t go straight down from here, too dangerous. We need to tack east, where there are more trees,’ whispered Pete as they crouched by the entrance to Kenwood House’s tea rooms.
‘Au contraire, Peter. What we need,’ said Chris, fixing on a point over Pete’s shoulder, ‘is an ice cream…’
A refreshment stand was lying overturned just beyond some picnic tables. ‘Come on, we’re out of sight. What do you want? Tub or cone?’
The sky was suddenly punctured at a single, fixed point. The flare detonated overhead, showering a pretty pink light over the building. It was only 7pm and still a balmy, sunny July evening. The additional light fell like an eye drinking in all it could briefly see.
‘Amateur hour,’ thought Pete. ‘Wasting one of your three flares when we can all still see just fine.’ Voices came from the spot they’d just left, near the car park. Friend or foe, it wasn’t clear, but there wasn’t time to worry about this point as their attention refocused on the deep clickety noise of tank treads approaching from the direction of the herb garden.
‘Shit!’
They made a dash for the thicker part of forest that edged Kenwood’s once well-kept parkland, just as the first detonation took out the pale Georgian edifice’s right-most corner.
Some 12 to 15 seconds later the ringing in their ears had subsided enough to make out what had happened. Three tanks had pulled up around the house and a few remaining staff, mostly kitchen-based to judge by their outfits, were waving white tea towels attached to brooms and yelling in Russian.
‘Fucking hell. How much were the tickets for this again?’ Chris asked.
‘A hundred and fifty quid, not including your outfit hire, I might add,’ responded Pete, brushing off the soil that they’d ended up covered in.
‘I mean, it’s bloody good, isn’t it!’ Chris looked a lot more alive to the situation now. ‘Thanks mate. Ledge-End…’
‘Keep your head down,’ said Pete and together they scrambled down the bank towards the farthest pond.
As they ran, the blend of adrenalin, noxious shell odour, and the effects of largely unfamiliar exercise began to foster a new sense of adventure. Its flavour was exciting. Normal life in a country that only engaged in remote, invisible nation-building had left these neural pathways unfired and unexplored. Comfortable jobs. Discomfort’s ambit had been only social, familial or cultural. Was this grit? The ‘real thing’?
Chris thought about screaming for a second. He really wanted to see just how loud he could be. Hear a man explode!
As they ran, Pete tried to contain his rising panic with vague recollections about ticket websites, hilarious reviews, insane price points, the hottest thing in town. ‘Invasion – such a potent reconnector,’ Mark Lawson had said. Plus you don’t want to miss out on these things. It’s the only point in staying in the financial war zone the city has become. Still, that sentence was easier to say when all the key words had been metaphors. Not like now, thought Pete, as he noticed the bullet-bent sign: ‘Welcome to Hampstead Heath’.
‘Isn’t that Vicky Parks from MediaPlayers?’
‘Shh! Where?’
Chris pointed up the slope to the broken low wooden fencing that edged a line of bushes. A young woman with brown bobbed hair was staring and prodding fiercely at her phone.
‘Totally have a thing for her. Hot. In. Camo!’
‘That’s really not important right now,’ whispered Pete, who was lying flat to the soil and staring at some other point to the west through his eyepiece. Chris stood up and waved. ‘Vicks! Vicks!’
Pete pulled his ankles out from under him and Chris collapsed onto the grass.
‘What the fuck are you doing? We don’t know which side she’s on!’ he hissed.
Chris made gun shapes with his fingers.
‘Aw come on! I’d happily be on her side, whoever she’s shooting.’
‘That is not. How. This. Works!’ Pete whispered.
Vicky Parks turned to look towards them as another young woman emerged from under the bush, and together they seemed to confer for a second before unholstering their weapons.
‘Yeah, yeah! I get it – stay in character, avoid capture, kill the baddies. Just saying. I mean it gets your blood up, this, doesn’t it? Oh man, look, she’s with Sarah Hills – also hot, oh—’
Chris stopped speaking as Sarah turned to face back into the treeline behind them before letting out a horrible guttural howl at the top of her voice. She fell forward, an arrow in the back of her right leg, moaning.
Vicky wheeled round and shot twice into the thick bushes above them, but the archer had already run. Pete grabbed Chris’s arm. ‘I told you, we’ve gotta go.’
‘Where to, though?’ asked Chris.
‘Bowling club – it’s hard cover.’
They dodged between the trees. What had always felt to Pete like the wildest patch of land in London now seemed horribly orderly, open and visible. As they darted forwards in short, controlled bursts of motion, deeply stored memories of childhood play guided them forward. Box Hill. The Devil’s Punchbowl. Chaste banter with girls met on French campsites when the parents were getting drunk in the bar by the pool. Random access memories of when the unfamiliar had been easy to adopt and adapt to.
Virtual reality had failed on the launchpad just a Christmas before. A loss of sight was no way to see the future, just a new excuse to trip over coffee tables. Swatting CGI dragons in suburban homes had nothing on real-life promenade warfare. Once you’d done it (if you survived), it made total sense. Until you’d done it… it looked like madness.
The Siege of Gursk had been a fairly well-forgotten, slightly plodding WWII epic made in the mid-’60s, which presumably died a death when Oliver Reed and Lee Marvin turned it down (whether out of boredom or alcoholism). But as a plot line for a live theatrical battle experience it was super compelling. Star in big-production war film! No experience necessary! Plus, ticket sales had rocketed since the Russian annexation of Latvia. ‘His dark materiels’, as one waggish sub-editor had headlined it. It was the kind of publicity PR agencies kill for.
The sun had finally succumbed and a cold shadow had smothered the Heath. The trees seemed to become more dense with the light’s retreat. Pete looked over at Chris, who had gone a bit ‘method’ in the last hour.
If a producer had been present, perhaps in a nearby dug-out, or watching remotely via tree-cam, they’d have smiled. Always happens. The personal transition required seems impossible until it is suddenly, utterly, complete. You just have to decide you’re up for it. The distant muffled screams could be coming from high-definition speakers in the trees, or they could be the sound of real injuries. Evolution ensures you assume the worst. The u
niforms help.
‘Right. What’s the plan? Take the bowling hut?’ whispered Chris in the failing light.
Pete pulled out and unfolded a small piece of paper. ‘No, we have to blow it up, it’s going to be a distraction while Assault Group Two liberates the tennis courts.’
‘Right. Let’s fucking do this…’ murmured Chris and the two men scrambled forward, full of renewed focus and adrenaline.
The producer was a cocky sort, but gave great interviews. It was an enthusing pitch. ‘You know what you need? To taste the literal. Get your face out of that screen, scuff those knees again. Life begins when visual metaphors end.’ What an insight that was. Remove the artistry and double-down on the intensity of the experience. So why not voting booths you could only reach by traversing a moat? Competitive parents’ evenings conducted on climbing walls. Reckless acts of theatre. Comfort was weakness. Real imagination meant being able to become a person who does actually terrible things, for delimited amounts of time.
The Siege of Gursk. Why not? The Rise of Man. The Great Unshackling. A newly global Britain. The Price is Death. The Heat is On. A Nation Votes 2: Vote Harder. A Spear For Your Thoughts. A Nation Fights. Love me, scare me. Kill to get a ticket.
Old Caziss
In Bar Raval, on an unassuming corner of a typical side street, is the original window bait himself. Old Caziss, the 71-year-old hombre with a thousand faces. A make-up technician of the highest artistry, he’s the lonely face that’s adorned three of the last six editions of Lonely Planet Barcelona. A theatrical everyman for all seasons, purveyor of analogue café theatrics nightly from table two, still keeping on in the era of glance, swipe, ignore.
At around nine o’clock, the June sun is starting to climb down behind the grimy red and orange apartment blocks that somehow gain grace as they lose detail. Off the square, couples are doing that effortlessly lovely-looking wandering, laughing, smoking thing. For the newly-minted-with-him-or-her surely a quick trip to the Raval? Let’s go see what Old Caziss is up to tonight, chica? Maybe it’s something good, something coo-coo, then a drink and a dance?
The window, elegantly inlaid with fading silvered deco patterns, has been his stage for as long as anyone can remember – which in the context of Barcelona bar life is around 17 to 20 years, give or take. People usually assume that it’s his bar. Surely that’s the only reason he gets to do that thing, whatever it is, every night? Or perhaps, as parents tell naughtier children, he lives in the sewers below, just coming up for a little money and a free sandwich.
Tonight’s face is one for the broadsheet fans. Caziss appears from behind the bar and with a slight leftward nod to Maria who runs the joint, he takes the 1.4 steps required to inhabit the stage that is the final table on the left. His age is undefinable in that way of certain men who can’t possibly ever have been young. Or maybe it’s too many years applying a dense putty of foundation from six every night. Anyway, surely an actor of all professions should be able to stop time?
His make-up does the work of scenery. And drag scarcely does justice to the ensemble’s ambition. One table, a window, the odd prop and a lot of intention. Grab their attention and a performance should work anywhere, was this small company’s motto.
The crowd of tourists and regulars outside start laughing and clapping. For Caziss tonight has become Justice Beatriz Balzar, the judge busted only two days before for corruption in Bilbao. Luxury apartments, a Russian dancer, denials to priests and talk show hosts. The source material’s almost too rich to bother with, yet here we are.
Caziss pauses to avoid tripping over his legal gown and grimaces dramatically, but are we the jury beyond or the defendants inert behind bulletproof glass?
His heavy jowls and rouged cheeks are nice caricature touches. Caziss’s large hands pound the portable typewriter with a look of ‘Who? Me?’ angelicism (a deft jab at the dishonesties that fill Balzar’s once best-selling memoir Power and Precision: My Life at the Levers). His hands stab and knead the keys like a conductor reduced to bread making. Then, with another imploring ‘Culpables? Me?’, comes the climax, as two faux tear ducts taped to the sides of his face start to squirt tears at the window. The crowd goes wild.
It’s one for the review pages tonight, for sure. Better even than the Clinton/Trump two-faces-at-once debate he staged back in July during the US election campaign.
The whooping subsides and Caziss stands effortfully before giving a full theatrical bow as Maria places his customary brandy at the end of the bar. Inside the sound is muted by the windows and the continued chat of the other patrons. The usual and dramatic usually converge in bars; this is how it should be. And anyway, this is Caziss’s home, he isn’t the one who’s gone out to be entertained.
The crowd dissipates rapidly, leaving two mid-thirties guys right by the window miming their adoration. Caziss looks at them with the practised eye of a stage actor who can read the reactions in rows one through ten without making any actual eye contact. Both guys are dressed as Anselmo, a character he played in the long-running Amantes y Compañeros. A grimace of recognition as he turns away, then. Every act is his, but he isn’t any act. Brandy aloft, gracias Maria! Until tomorrow!
The Gentleman Vanishes
It’s usually during a lull in conversation that the inevitable question will show its plucky little face. The danger increases over time, and I hadn’t seen a lot of this gang for months, not since Daniel’s last birthday.
‘So… are you courting, Andrew?’
Implicit smiley at the fun use of ‘courting’. Comes up with uncharming regularity, but I usually just wince inwardly and absorb.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Who is she? Will we approve?’ More implicit funnies. I blame Downton Abbey.
‘Well, I mean, I don’t have a name to give you but the air is full of promise, things are definitely arcing in that… direction?’ Slight pause while we both sip. ‘I’ll be married by Christmas.’
Bit overconfident that last bit, but the third glass of wine’s a little booster whispering in your ear, isn’t he?
‘A Christmas wedding, Andrew! That’s fantastic! Darling, Andrew’s finally getting hitched!’ Jeannie leans across from a parallel conversation and beams with a friendly, if sardonic, raise of her glass. ‘Finally!’
‘I feel I should be clear – there’s no actual Victoria, Sally, Lynette or Rachel yet in the frame, per se. The same holds true for Conchitas, Emmanuelles and Janes. Katelyns and Imeldas also. But I think there just comes a time in a man’s life when—’
‘… You ought to take a wife?’
‘Exactly. Although “take” makes it sound unduly Neeson-esque… But the will is definitely there, a lot of the groundwork, so to say, has been done. There’s the house in Chiswick, of course—’
‘A definite plus…’
‘Right. And a whole load of fixes around prior issues, really solid. And you can amass so many key data points now, some of the graphs are quite revelatory. Likely wedding venues I’ve tabulated and evaluated. Possible locations for initial dates evaluated for their relative charm, offset against meteorological office data for the last 20 years and so on. The jigsaw is being completed, you might say.’
‘Impressive stuff…’
‘I mean, I don’t want to jinx it and say, “Daniel, we have a foolproof system – join us”, ha-ha! – no, that would be overstating it… But there are some Thursday nights when possibility just eddies about like an intoxicating mist. It’s an exciting time.’
Daniel smiles, but is it you speaking or the person that you become once the words are spoken into the room?
‘I mean, five years ago I probably hadn’t even plotted the wine list variation matrix for Upper Street. Mad, really – I was really dawdling then, very second gear. As if a generalised presumption that an acceptable Pinot Noir could be had at a reasonable price point anywhere would actually fly in a live-fire situation on the ground. Bonkers!
‘No, that’s when it really hit
me: you have to build up a detailed picture first. I mean, you’re in business – you know how important robust data sets are, right? Detailed observations – get a sense of how the zephyrs voice their sighs across the borough, sunlight effectiveness quota south of the Essex Road across Qs two and three, which artisanal bakeries are really shifting units and so on.
‘I’m taking the temperature these days, sensing movements in the air, but tasting only the telling pollen. Hence my confidence – but I’m going on and on!’
Daniel takes a breaded courgette stick from one of the host’s daughters, who are playing serving girls for the night. A cool breeze flows in as a few people start dancing nostalgically on the patio to ‘Common People’ by Pulp, despite the dipping autumn temperature. Someone mentions William Shatner.
‘Top up?’ says Daniel, munching.
‘Why not. Ah, the good stuff. She likes Pouilly too.’
‘She?’
‘She-who-will-be. Once it’s all in the bag, as it were. Up and running. Personally, I can’t wait.’
‘She sounds special.’
‘Adorable, really. We’ve somehow endeavoured at great length to have so much in common. But you know, if I’ve learned one thing, whether it’s kismet’s wings or centrally-planned-and-administered, love – it’s just amazing, isn’t it?
Daniel puts his plate down.
‘Yes, absolutely – when I met Jeannie we—’
‘It’s that ineffable thing that underpins so much other information. Love. Amazing. I sometimes think it’s this giddying gas that’s gently gathering between the spreadsheets and the surveillance data. Did you know 24 per cent of women born after 1988 who currently rent in Tower Hamlets, Bow or Hackney have at least one band-related tattoo and use recreational drugs, but only at a purely recreational level? I mean, on one level that amount of detail seems, well, mad… But it builds up a picture, grades the senses to the actual, the possible. It’s exciting, vital research. I’m 86 per cent more likely to remain in conversation with a girl called Amelia than a girl called Vista, Tamara or Jade. Facts, Daniel; hard facts build insight, alignment. Readiness.’
Not From Above! Page 6