The Condition of Muzak

by Michael Moorcock

  “And the Great White Whale,” suggested Mr Hira, putting his arm round Mitzi’s waist. Mitzi rubbed herself against him. Beesley burped. “Thank you,” he said. His flesh turned to a shade of green much paler than his drink. He shut his mouth suddenly and rolled urgently towards the lavatories.

  “Hurry up,” Frank called after him, “or you’ll miss the coach.”

  “Such a shame,” said Miss Brunner. “They ruined him, unfrocking him like that—or un-knickerbockering him, is it? The elders made far too much of it. He was only after their bullseyes.”

  “Definitely the post-war answer to Walt Disney,” Major Nye was saying enthusiastically to Catherine. “I love him. I’ve enjoyed them all. Ten Thousand and One. The Clock and the Orange. Barry Lindsay. He can do no wrong in my eyes.”

  “I’ve always thought his pictures have everything except a good director,” said Jerry, not for the first time.

  “Yes, I know,” said Catherine. “You’ve mentioned it before.” She meant no harm, but she crushed him. He drank another whisky.

  Mrs Cornelius came flat-footed to the bar. “’Ow old’s that Miss Brunner nar? She was a stoodent teacher, wa’n’t she, w’en you woz at school? Must be fifteen years, eh? Still at St Victor’s, is she?”

  “Still there.” Miss Brunner had heard her. “I’m headmistress now, you know.”

  Mrs Cornelius was admiring. “I’ve got ter ’and it ter yer.” She winked at Miss Brunner and jerked her thumb towards her son. “Carn’t yer do somefink abart ’is appearance? Ain’t yer still got some inflerence over ’im? ’E used ter be such a smart dresser—all the trendy colours, all bright an’ sharp. Nar look at ’im. Looks as if ’e’s garn on a bloody safari! Looks like a bleedin’ clarn at ther circus wiv them trahsers! Ah, ya, ha, her, her—ker-ker-ker-ker!”

  “The world caught up with me,” said Jerry, “that’s all. Anyway, I never liked going with the crowd.”

  His mother hugged him and stopped herself coughing. “There, there! Don’t let yer ol’ ma git yer dahn. No offence meant, Jer.”

  “None taken, Mum.”

  “That’s the stuff. There’s not a lot o’ ’arm in yer, Jerry. I’ll say that!”

  “What you drinking, then?”

  “’S’all right—ol’ money-bags is payin’—’ave one on the Fur King o’ Elgin Crescent! I did okay stayin’ wiv ’im, eh?”

  “You certainly did.”

  “I’ve never gone short o’ beaux,” she said. “Whatever else ’as ’appened ter me. Men’ve orlways fancied me. An’ I, I’ve gotter admit, ’ave orlways fancied them.” She shifted on her massive legs. “Ker-ker-ker.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, Mum,” he said as she shouted for service. “You’ll still be going in a hundred years.”

  “Two bloody ’undred!” She winked at him. “Vodka, port an’ lemon an’ whatever ’e’s ’avin’,” she told the barman. She indicated her son.

  “Double brandy, please,” said Jerry. He thought he might as well get something out of an evening which had so far been more than a little depressing.

  “Is ’at right,” said his mother, “abart you goin’ off all them pop stars yer used ter like?”

  “They never fulfilled their promise, did they?”

  “An’ Georgie Best and Muhammad Ali and them others?”

  “Same went for them. They all seemed to let me down at the same time.”

  “Funny, reely, wiv Caff takin’ up with all that, nar. Wot yer like nowadays?”

  “Nothing much. I’ve lost faith in heroes.”

  “Ah, well. Yer orlways did ’ave yer ’ead in the clards. Come darn ter Earf a bit now, eh?”

  “Looks like it.”

  Catherine put her arm through his. “Don’t needle him, Mum. Everybody’s picking on him tonight.”

  “She wasn’t,” said Jerry. “Not really.”

  “Buyin’ ’im a bloody drink, wa’n I?” His mother was defensive. “You wos orlways too protective to’ards ’im, Caff. Let ’im stand on ’is own two feet—’e’s old enough an’ ugly enough nar!” But Mrs Cornelius was smiling as she carried the vodka and port back to her table.

  Jerry sipped his brandy. He offered the glass to her. “Want some?”

  She nodded and took the drink. “You coming with us to Brighton?”

  “Depends how pissed I get. It’s the worst New Year I’ve ever had. I feel so lonely. I’m really depressed, Cath.”

  “That’s not hard to see. Whenever you wear the wrong clothes for the weather I can tell. Clothes are a dead giveaway, aren’t they, to how a person’s feeling? If you like we can go back to my flat. I don’t particularly want to spend God knows how long in a smoky coach, singing rude songs—besides the roads are almost impassable, apparently. Heaviest snow of the century. We could see the New Year in together.”

  “What about your girl friend?”

  “She’s working. Gone abroad for a few days. She knows about us, anyway.” Catherine squeezed his hand.

  He was profoundly grateful. “Why not?” he said casually.

  The door of the pub opened and cold air blew in. There was a glimpse of the frozen street. A bulky figure stood there. He was dressed in a vast dark overcoat, with a black muffler over his face, a fur cap on his head. In the odd light from the pub the tall dog at his side seemed to have red ears and eyes.

  “We’re off!” cried Frank with delight. “Off into the countryside. A-hunting we will go. Tantivvy, tantivvy!”

  Jerry saw a small black-and-white cat run from the warmth of the bar into the chill of the street and had an impulse to stop it, but the newcomer was shouting now: “All aboard what’s going aboard!”

  Hooters, whistles, rattles clattered and cawed and shrieked as, baying, the party surged out into the old year’s last night.

  CODA

  But Harlequin’s domination has waned … In the modern world he is pale and lost, the frustrated Pierrot. Columbine has become a gold digger, Pantaloon is gaga, and the Harlequinade itself which used to be the core of the Pantomime, the mythical world into which all waited for the particular scene to be transformed, is now separated off as a quaint little period piece.

  —Randall Swinger,

  ‘The Rise and Fall of Harlequin’,

  Lilliput Magazine, December 1948

  OVERCROWDING–THE INCREASING STRESS IN NORTH KENSINGTON

  North Kensington’s Golborne Ward is the most severely overcrowded area in all London. Here 40% of the people live at a Housing Density of more than 1½ people a room. Kensington is one of the four London boroughs in which “signs of increasing stress can be seen through the effects of overcrowding”. These are some of the stock facts to emerge from the Milner Holland report of housing in London.

  Kensington Post, 19 March, 1965

  MRS C. AND FRANKIE C.

  “They say in the paper that we are on the brink of a new Ice Age,” said Colonel Pyat hopefully, casting a gloomy, Slavic eye over his ranks and ranks of old fur coats, evening capes, stoles, cloaks, hats and gloves. Spring had just arrived and with it the normal slackening off of business which always depressed him. He had long since ceased to believe in the future.

  “Stop broodin’ yer silly ol’ bugger an’ ’urry up,” said Mrs Cornelius cheerfully. Her old eyes glittered behind a barricade of cream and powder. “Ker-ker-ker. We still got ter call fer Frank.” Out of loyalty she wore his latest gift, though the weather was unusually mild. They were on their way to the People’s Spring Festival, organised by local community leaders on the Westway Green below the motorway flyover to the west of Portobello Road. Mrs Cornelius was excited. It was to be Jerry’s first public appearance with his rock-and-roll band, the Deep Fix.

  “Mind you,” she said as an afterthought, “these fings orlways start late, if at all. Still, it’s up ter us ter be on time, innit!”

  “I hate it,” grumbled Pyat. “Jungle music. Teddy Boy noise.”

  “Cor! You are art o’ touch, incha!” She sna
pped her fingers and rocked from side to side, wafting lavender water and scented powder. “Y’ve gotta be wiv it these days—trendy, far art, too much, rock an’ roll!”

  She swayed through the door into Elgin Crescent. It was a busy Saturday in the market. Colonel Pyat glanced viciously at the Indians, with their cheap cheesecloth shirts and dresses, who were doing such a roaring trade. There was the usual confusion of locals trying to shop in a hurry while visitors moved slowly and uncertainly along the narrow street between the stalls, wondering why so many people scowled at them. Most of the money they brought to Portobello Road stayed in the district for the few hours that the antique-dealers and stall-holders remained there. Colonel Pyat followed Mrs Cornelius from the shop, locking the door carefully behind him. He, too, wore an enormous fur coat. The day was miserably bright and sunny.

  Together they pushed their way up the Portobello Road, through the trinket-sellers, the street-musicians, the purveyors of craft-goods, the racks of denim and cheesecloth, the mass-produced patches and buttons and belt-buckles, the greengrocery stalls, the sellers of Indian metalware, of beads, flutes, drums, posters, army uniforms, handbags and purses, weapons, Victoriana, until they reached Frank’s shop, which was currently dealing in stripped pine. Frank waited reluctantly outside, holding a brass candlestick in each hand, part of his old antique stock. “If I sell ’em for that,” he told a small man in a pork-pie hat, a camera and a black blazer with four metal buttons on the cuff (evidently a German), “I shan’t make any profit, shall I?”

  “Fifteen?” said the German.

  “Sixteen,” said Frank, “and that’s final.”

  “Done,” said the German awkwardly.

  “You’re so right,” said Frank accepting the money. “You won’t regret it. That stuff appreciates, some of it.”

  “Come on, Frankie,” said his mother, pulling at him. “Yer can’t stop dealin’, can yer, yer little cunt?”

  He was offended. “At least someone in this family’s making their own living.”

  They trekked on until they reached the railway arch and, immediately after it, the motorway arch, where dozens of small stalls were set out selling the accumulated junk of the twentieth century. They skirted the stalls even as their eyes automatically shifted across the wares, rounding the corner to the big patch of grass where a crowd of young bohemians and their children had already gathered outside the graffiti-smeared walls of one of the motorway bays. This bay had a chicken-wire fence strung between its columns and a sign, already much attacked by weather and local children: WESTWAY THEATRE. Within the bay old railway sleepers had been arranged in banks to form seats. On the wall behind the seats were three murals, one by Cawthorn, one by Riches and one by Waterhouse. Somehow the murals had escaped the ravages of the rest of the theatre which had long ago collapsed as a result of calculated lack of local government support. The council had been reluctant to allow the project in the first place and had made sure it would not flourish by bringing in an administrator from outside the district and making sure that he had no power, no money and no encouragement. After a while enthusiasm had broken down into a classic series of disputes between a variety of splinter groups and an attempt to produce a free theatre for the district had failed. But, for the first time in over a year, it was to be opened—or had been opened—by the people who had originally started the scheme with their free Saturday concerts featuring Quiver, Brinsley Schwartz, the Pink Fairies, Henry Cow, Mighty Baby, Come to the Edge and Hawkwind, until the police, in support of seven Rate Payers, had managed to put a stop to them—and Jerry and his band were to have their chance at last.

  Mrs Cornelius, with the dignity of one who was related to an artiste, Colonel Pyat in tow, Frank in the rear, went through the gates, calling out to her son who sat dreamily on the little stage trying to put a new plug on his amplifier. “’Ere we are, then! Give us a number, lads!”

  Mo Collier grinned at her in some shyness. He had plugged in his bass and was plunking at it. No sound came from his own amp. He turned a couple of knobs and a screeching rose and fell. He made another hasty adjustment. “’Ullo, Mrs C. You’re a bit early, aincha? We don’t start till ’alf past two.”

  “It is now exactly a quarter to three,” said Colonel Pyat. He tapped his wristwatch as if it were a barometer.

  “Sod,” said Jerry. He looked through the chicken wire at the gathering crowd. Behind it a number of policemen were beginning to line up. He finished with the plug and fitted it into the board. A red light flickered on his amplifier. He was surprised. He took his Rickenbacker electric twelve-string over to the amplifier and pushed the jack-plug lead into the socket. He played a chord. Mo winced. “We’d better tune up.”

  Terry the drummer suddenly came to life behind the kit and played an erratic roll before subsiding again. He looked like the dormouse in Alice in Wonderland. They had all had several tabs of mandrax and had become very stoned to help quell their nerves for their performance. Jerry began to pluck at his many strings, staring vaguely at Mo, who plucked back. Gradually they got their instruments into some kind of uniform tuning. Mo nodded towards the centre of the stage where hardboard had been placed across a gap (there had been two attempts to burn down the theatre during disputes between different radical groups). “Watch out for the ’ole, man.”

  Jerry nodded absent-mindedly. He was visualising the enthusiasm of his public. He had a glazed, harried look.

  “All right, Mick Jagger,” shouted Frank in his poshest voice, “let’s hear you!”

  “Ker-ker-ker,” said his mother.

  Jerry approached the microphone and began to chant into it. Nothing came through the PA. He staggered back towards the amplifiers. Elsewhere various people were fiddling with other pieces of faulty electrical equipment. Jerry had a word with his friend Trux, who was holding a wire in one hand and scratching his head with a screwdriver.

  “Ker-ker-ker.”

  People were beginning to file into the theatre now, although the stage was so arranged that the band would play facing the people who sat outside on the grass. Some of the organisers of the event had not yet turned up. There had been a problem involving fresh disputes with a group of Rate Payers; the organisers could be seen on the far side of the green, gesticulating, deep in conversation with a number of middle-aged men and women with arms folded in front of them and expressions of extreme distaste on their faces as they looked first at the crowd and then at the stage. Once or twice a policeman wandered over and talked to a long-haired man in a fairisle pullover or had a word with a thin-lipped Rate Payer.

  Jerry went behind the stage into the connecting bay, which served as a dressing room. He was beginning to feel much better. He accepted a joint from a girl whom he remembered vaguely. Her name was Shirley Withers and she had offered him a warm look such as he had not received for a very long time. He felt taller, slimmer, more handsome. He grinned at her. A promising grin. He began to move with some of his old grace, the guitar resting casually on his hip. He went back on stage and plugged in again. He played a fast twelve-bar progression. He knew he was playing well. He nodded to Mo and Terry and began to jump up and down as he played. Some people were already clapping and cheering.

  Mo put a final turn on his A string and inclined his head in a brief bow. Mrs Cornelius, Colonel Pyat and Frank Cornelius sat down in the front row. Jerry did not look at them. He was looking at his Fame.

  Unexpectedly, they all started more or less together, going into a fast, standard boogie rhythm. Jerry danced towards the mike. He had never felt so happy. At last he was able to emulate all his earlier heroes. Perhaps he could become a hero himself, only he wouldn’t let people down the way the others had. The crowd was his. He stepped up to the mike and opened his mouth.

  The crowd roared.

  It was the last thing he heard before the floor gave way beneath his feet and he fell into the shallow pit below.

  He was far too drugged to feel any real pain, or even much concern, as he
lay on his back looking up at the dim patch of daylight above, at the broken Rickenbacker on his chest, listening to the waves of laughter and applause from the audience, to Mo’s bewildered bass, to Terry’s inappropriately determined drum solo. Then he passed out for a moment or two.

  He felt sick and miserable when he woke up. Shirley Withers was in the hole with him. She was trying to lift him upright. He saw his mum peering over the edge.

  “You okay, Jer?”

  “I’m fine. I can carry on now.” He knew his chance had disappeared. “Your guitar’s ruined,” said Shirley. “Have you got another?”

  He shook his head. He got to his feet, the pieces of smashed wood still hanging around him by the strap. He climbed out of the hole and blinked. The police had closed in on the crowd. A fight had started. Two panda-car constables were already on stage. Frank was talking to them.

  “Pigs!” shouted Jerry weakly. He turned to Terry. “Keep playing. Keep playing.”

  “They turned the power off,” said Mo. He sat down cross-legged and buried his face in his hands.

  “Don’t let them stop your music!” Jerry addressed the confused crowd. “You’ve got rights. We’ve all got rights.”

  “No need to make any more trouble, sir,” said one of the constables. “How’s the head?”

  “Piss off!” said Jerry. “It’s a plot. Why’d you bloody have to interfere?”

  “We’ve had complaints. I’ve nothing against this sort of music myself. I like it. Not that you could play any now, could you, old son?” He indicated the broken Rickenbacker. “So there’s not a lot of point in making a fuss.”