‘Hell to pay,’ Jeff broke in, ‘when the English Public hears about that!’
‘The Celtics are going to be sooo embarrassed!’
‘Oh,’ said Jeff, taking in their expressions. ‘Duh. This is not news to you guys. Of course it isn’t. Oh, dumb. This is why you were here.’
Fiorinda’s eyes did that beautiful and scary thing, where the pupils shoot out wide, and then zip back almost to vanishing point, so you seem to be looking at two frosted grey stones. ‘Press conference,’ she said. ‘My room, at the pub. Now.’
The Spitalls Farm affair was the biggest scandal since Dissolution. A network of high society hardcore-ritualists was laid bare. Cabinet Ministers tumbled. Several members of the Green Second Chamber were obliged to resign. The mainstream English Celtics (formerly; the Ancient British) fell over themselves repudiating this horrific distortion of their rites, and declaring their loyalty to Ax Preston and the Reich. The premier Islamic radio station called on Mr Preston to throw out the whole sorry so-called government and take over: direct rule.
Ax dismissed this suggestion as nonsense.
David Sale made a clean breast of his own Celtic flirtation, and people admired him for it. His involvement at Spitall’s Farm never became public. Those who knew didn’t talk, and whatever agency had set the trap, they didn’t emerge. The Prime Minister and Mr Dictator came out of it all very well, and reassuringly united. The fate of the tigers was buried on inside pages.
One day at the end of the August Sage and Fiorinda met on a station platform somwhere—logistically—between Milton Keynes National Bowl and Cardiff Stadium, where they had been playing; respectively with the Heads and with DARK. Ax was still embroiled in the Spitall Farm affair, and had been forced to cancel the rest of his festival season gigs. They were on their way to Brixton to spend a night with him: but there were hours before the next train to London, so they booked themselves into the hotel next door to the station.
Their stolen moments were marred by a spiteful receptionist, who decided to be scandalized that they weren’t spending the night. ‘I’m afraid this isn’t Tokyo, Mr Aoxomoxoa…’ But who cares: there was a room, with a bed in it. They made love, at length and blissfully, and lay together in the afterglow, discussing the strange stains on the ceiling; the curious, lurid growth of mould that rimmed the windows. Isn’t damp hotel room mould usually black?
Fiorinda sprawled lax-limbed as a sleepy kitten, her cheek resting on his forearm, his crippled right hand warm in hers. He would hold hands now, almost without flinching, even when stone-cold sober. She had trained him.
‘I hope Ax is in a better mood.’
‘He will be,’ said Sage, placidly. ‘I think we’ve pulled it off. In a week or two David will have forgotten his neck ever needed saving, and everything will be the same as before.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
Sage sighed. ‘Okay, I know it’s not true.’
‘He’s crossed the Rubicon. He must rule, or go under. Poor Ax, he has to be the only person in England who’s surprised.’
‘He’s not. He just keeps doing these things to himself, and always forgets how much it’s going to hurt. He has to forget, or he’d run away screaming.’
The implant figures under the skin of Sage’s wrist moved time along, gently.
‘Do you still think I should tell him about my weird tricks?’
‘What if you don’t, someone else finds out and denounces you as a witch?’
She sat up. So did he. They faced each other, naked to naked.
‘I’m sorry, my brat. But it’s the word—’
‘I don’t want anyone to know. I don’t want to be a werewolf, Sage.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not a werewolf.’
‘Oh no? Watch this.’
Fiorinda got down from the bed and sat on the floor in front of the minibar (which was empty, apart from a different interesting mould). She touched the door. Before you could take a breath, Fiorinda’s hand was through the coated metal. There was a poisonous, molten smell, an implosion of heat. The front of the fridge collapsed inwards, bubbling, folding itself like a Dali clock.
‘Fuck me,’ said Sage. ‘How are we going to explain that at reception?’
‘Maybe we should throw it out of the window.’
She sat very still; he could hear her breathing. Then she reached out and touched the wreckage. He thought her fingers would be burnt to the bone: but no, a shift his eyes couldn’t follow and the minibar was intact, as if nothing had happened. She looked up at him, this fragile naked girl; red curls down her back, the blood driven out of her face, sweat standing in clear drops on her forehead—
‘Are you going to throw up?’
Fiorinda swallowed. ‘I don’t think so. Give me a moment.’
‘How long have you known you could do something like that?’
‘First time. I just thought I probably could. Mental experiments. Me, Einstein. Destroying something feels like nothing. Just a rush, a horrible rush. Restoring it is like climbing a towerblock with a car on my back.’
‘Mm. You’re hauling something back through the entropy barrier.’
Fiorinda grabbed her head, as if it was about to fly apart. ‘Oh, fuck off. You are so fucking unsympathetic whenever I’m in trouble. I don’t need a physics lesson, thanks. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’
‘That breaking something is easier than fixing it? I knew that.’
‘I’m telling you that magic is real, and the real stuff, the hard stuff, is deadly dangerous and fundamentally hateful, and I’ve got it, like a disease, but I don’t want to have anything to do with it ever, ever, ever.’
‘But no one was making magic at Spitall’s Farm?’
She looked him in the eye. ‘You are so fucking unsympathetic.’
‘No one but Fiorinda?’
‘I didn’t do anything. And now you don’t want to touch me because I’m a monster, and I don’t blame you.’
He had been paralysed by astonishment. He jumped off the bed, picked her up and carried her back, wrapped her in the raggedy candlewick and the damp-smelling blankets and rocked her in his arms. Hush, hush, baby. Sssh, little darling, everything is okay, everything will be all right—
‘If ever you find out about anyone else making real magic like mine, tell Ax about me straight away. You won’t have to. I’ll tell him myself, instantly, if he ever needs to know—’
‘I’m not going to make you do anything. Hush. There’s just one thing.’
‘What?’
‘Back in July… What made you decide to visit your father’s house?’
She cuddled closer. ‘Nothing to do with this. That was just me, inspired by Fergal, trying to face my stupid past and put it behind me. Sage, are you and I responsible for things like Spitall’s Farm? Not Ax, never my Ax, he only wanted to save the world. We were the ones who said everything’s allowed.’
‘Nah. Hideous atrocities don’t need rock and roll to get them going. Hey—’ He stroked the pure curve of her cheek with his lopsided claw. Bless her, she didn’t seem to mind. ‘Break the mood. We’re in bed together, did you notice? Isn’t that nice? We’ve half an hour: want some more?’
The London train was stuffed, their reserved seats long gone, every corridor packed, a scrap of floor space grudgingly ceded to the Triumvirate partners. Fiorinda slept, with her head on Sage’s knees. But what would happen if you tried to pull a stunt like that with the hotel fridge, using ATP, cell-metabolism energy? You’d be dead before you started… So what is she doing?
My darling Fee, you are not telling me the whole story, and I think perhaps you’re right: don’t explain, bury it. Let’s hope it stays buried. Sage tipped his head back against the rattling panel behind him, tried in vain to ease his cramped limbs, and thought of limousines. Rain dashed against dark glass, the English huddled together, damply steaming, in the cosiness of adversity. What if this is it? What if we never escape? As long as we
’re together, I’m not complaining.
On that extremely fraught morning in Wethamcote, Fiorinda had distracted Jeff and Joe with the very cool suggestion of a Rock and Roll Reich joint interview, maybe a kind of reality show…an idea that grew, a project that became highly significant to the Few, through the weeks when the Spitall’s Farm affair was burning itself out. In late September, the day before the live recording began, Fiorinda visited the National Gallery. She wanted to look at ‘She Feeds And Clothes Her Demons’ again. The portrait lived indoors now, with the classic virtual masterpieces, in a specially lit room in the Sainsbury Wing. As she threaded the crowds she was startled to see Fergal Kearney, in front of the very picture she’d come to see. She wondered if he’d followed her, and snuck ahead to meet her ‘by accident’. It would be typical.
Fergal had moved in with Fiorinda’s gran, an inspired arrangement. The old witch liked him, and he kept her in order with surprising tact. Of course she couldn’t resist dosing him, which worried Fergal’s friends: but it didn’t seem to do Fergal any harm. His health seemed better than when he arrived. His shy devotion to Fiorinda was not very demanding. She knew it was there, but he wasn’t a stalker. They’d barely spoken since Wethamcote.
She hesitated: and went over to join him. They studied the weary goblin’s nursemaid with her inadequate bag of treats. After a few moments he turned and looked at her. Fiorinda looked back, wondering if she imagined the knowledge; or the grave sympathy she read in the depths of his sea-green eyes.
‘Well, Fergal,’ she said, ‘now you know some of our secrets.’
‘Aye.’
She could have been referring to the truth about David Sale. She could have been referring to many things. ‘What do you intend to do about it?’
Naturally enough, considering the state of his teeth and his liver, Fergal had awful bad breath, and he knew it. He covered his mouth, cleared his throat and edged away, embarrassed to have her so close.
‘I intend to guard yer secrets with me life, Fiorinda.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I need people I can trust.’
Bridge House
Outside the Castle Museum in the centre of Taunton there stand a block of granite with a bronze sword in it, buried halfway to the hilts. It features, as Chosen Few buffs will know, in an early video, the one they made for ‘Glass Island’. Bridge House, our post-modern Camelot, is about a mile away. It’s a solid, bourgeois, nineteenth-century dwelling in a fashionably dishevelled garden (Milly is the gardener), that was drummer Milly Kettle’s childhood home. The double garage that was the Chosen Few’s first rehearsal space is there. A wisteria vine obscures the stone slab above the front door, plastered into place by Ax and Jordan Preston (long before Ax’s conversion to Islam); that bears an inscription from the ruined city of Fatepur Sikri, The prophet jesu says: this world is a bridge, make no house upon it.
In September of the year after his inauguration, straight after the very low key celebration of the anniversary, Ax went down to Taunton, cancelling all public engagements, and spent several weeks at Bridge House with his band and his Triumvirate partners, his cat Elsie; and a ten-month-old baby, Ax’s nephew, Albi. Visitors came and went. Much of what happened was broadcast live, on the English Terrestrial Channel 7 (Cult TV). The whole event became Bridge House, a fabulous collaborative work that, a landmark in the career of every artist involved; and they were many.
Before we enter that deceptively simple, deeply complex edifice of words and music, sound and vision, time and stillness, inspired impro, let’s take a moment to wonder why. Why did Ax do this; and how did he get the brainy bruiser and our boho princess to agree? It’s no secret that Ax’s Triumvirate partners and his family band have never been close. And why the NME publishing deal? Why didn’t The Insanitude label publish this? Why is Fiorinda, as ‘Miss Brown’, dressed in grey? What happened between George Merrick and the domestic robot? Why did our beloved leader drop everything and spend six weeks at play, when the country was reeling in shock after the Spitall’s Farm affair? There are many questions, there are many answers; there is a richness of speculation.
What do we see? First and foremost we see a great deal of the original Chosen Few, playing together in that basement studio; with the addition of fifteen-year-old Maya, a cracking young guitarist (‘Tot’ Torquil Preston, who comes between Maya and Shane, the Chosen Few’s bassist, is not musical, and has never been involved in the Reich). We see what a tight little band they are, and how obsessively they love making music: Ska and Metal; their roots. We hear them reminiscing about how it was. The Preston brothers growing up on a sink estate, seeing hardly another non-white face except for the Chinese family at the chip shop. Milly Kettle, the leafy suburban girl who met Jordan at college, joined the band, fell in love with big brother and crossed over to the wrong side of the tracks…(But now she’s back again, and they’re all living the leafy suburban life). We meet Ax’s mother, Sunny, a Christian refugee from the Sudan: the woman who gave Ax his centre, and his will to do good. We meet Dan Preston, whose probable antecedents run the whole gamut of the port of Bristol, the likeable ne’er do well who gave the Ax his edge. We hear the brothers and their sister talk, immigrant hearts: about loving this landscape, this piece of earth where they were born, not made; and about being green. Light green, lazy green (by the standards of today). Recalcitrant car drivers, tobacco-smokers, lovers of gadgets, lovers of toys, lovers of tech. Ax is not a moderate revolutionary, anyone who thinks that makes a big mistake. But he’s not a puritan. No way.
What does it all mean?
The effect of Bridge House is cumulative. There are no speeches, no statements. Celtic blood sacrifice is not discussed. The renewed threat of utter chaos througout Europe, after the disasters in Italy, barely rates a mention. But there is a purpose. What we are offered is a glimpse of a compromised and possible Utopia, the future as Ax has dreamed it. A life of recreation. Of making art, with people you both love and hate (often equally, and at the same time). Expect no revelations, no soap-opera heated dialogue. Expect a disconcerting, self-examining openness.
Down-dressing Milly Kettle, no-nonsense haircut and gardeners’ hands, sits in the conservatory answering interview questions, while the baby clambers around. Sunlight falls on her. ‘I was Ax’s girlfriend for six years,’ she says. ‘I loved him, I didn’t understand him. We had great sex, we had some good conversations. I knew he wasn’t faithful to me. I put up with it: you know, rockstars. I thought that was it, I thought that was all he had to give. He was Captain Sensible. Then when it was all over I saw him with Fiorinda. He was a totally different person.’
How did you feel about that, asks the unseen interviewer, a barely-heard murmur.
‘Gutted,’ says Milly.
The wriggling baby suddenly seems too much for her. The interviewer’s hands come into shot. It’s Ax. He takes his nephew in his arms. He has no child. Fiorinda can’t have children. The man and woman look at each other in silence.
This is art, of course. But art is life. Life is performance.
In Dissolution England the Triumvirate and their friends are the Few we have Chosen. They are our Shaman. They take the hallucinatory poison, the wrecking-ball violence of these times and transform it for us. Bridge House is the algorithm of that transformation, a work of art, a set of instructions, a metaphysical packed lunch: survival rations for a journey into the dark.
The Glass Island video. Cartoon figures: twentyone-year-old Ax pulls the sword from the stone, Shane, Jordan and Milly hauling on him like a tug of war team. It becomes his guitar. The granite block leaps into the air. The Chosen Few try to flee: it splats them. Ax is our champion, but he can’t die for us. Self-sacrifice is not an option for this messiah, he has to live. He has to keep his personal freedom, paradoxically intact, or his project is doomed and we all know it. Can our big brother have it all? Read the music, watch the movie, get your head into this immersion. Come, and see.
from the Introdu
ction to Ax At The Bridge, Dian Buckley,
Orionbooks 20XX
FIVE
Lithium
The day began with a dreary hour or two of admin, getting nowhere because the world was still on fuel-starvation holiday. Moving on to a session in the Zen Self tent, wired up to the brain machines; which lasted until after dark. No joy there, either. He tramped across the site, through snow falling soft and insistent on the frozen slush that had been hanging around since Christmas. It was pretty, but immediately made him think of what the thaw would be like. Fucking insane neo-mediaeval crap, this Rivermead concept.
The van was cold and empty. He had to remind himself he’d warned his band, warned everyone, to leave him the fuck alone. Snow falling like death on the other side of the obsidian windows. He sat in the kitchen, staring at the mirror door, switching the mask on and off, thinking, what am I doing with my life? What do people see in that face? It has a weird symmetry. It has too much mouth. It has fine lines spraying from the corners of its eyes, and the pores are like cinder pits.
Shoulda stayed in purdah. I liked my purdah.
Fiorinda arrived about eight. He had to let her in, he’d locked the box. She pulled off her tam-o’-shanter and her coat, shaking snow from her hair. ‘About time. It’s twelve degrees below out there. What a winter. Is this because the Gulf Stream switched itself off, or turned upside down, whatever it did?’
‘It’s just snow.’ He headed for his bedroom.
She came after him, cheerfully. She was wearing the red and gold Elizabeth dress that he loved: which touched him, but couldn’t lift his mood. ‘Rupert gave me a card for you. Shall I open it?’ Rupert, the White Van Man of Reading Arena, was veteran caterer to the Few and friends: provider of many a corn pattie and cognac-soused breakfast, when Fiorinda and the Heads were Dissolution Summer staybehinds. She opened the envelope.
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