‘Oooh. I’m afraid it’s got a number on it.’
‘Bastard.’
He’d been tinkering with the Unmasked immersions, that were still not working because he never had the time. He closed it all down and lay on the bed.
‘There’s a present, too, I think it’s a buttered applecake. But you can’t have it, as you called him a bastard.’
They got under the quilt together, because it was fucking cold, and he couldn’t ATP-prime the heating, something wrong with it. Holding her sweet body, his cock wearily half-erect, he wanted to ask, where’s Ax?, but he was too proud. Another winter of Dissolution and nothing changes, my darling girl and I are among the preterite, with our ruined careers and our love that might have been, and the man we both adore who is too busy saving the world.
Bang, bang.
‘I wonder who that could be!’ Fiorinda darted out of the bed.
Ax came back with her, snow on his sleek hair and his old leather coat.
‘Glad you could make it.’
‘Yeah, well. I decided to pop down, birthday boy. I needn’t stay.’
Sage turned his face to the wall. ‘You can laugh. You’ll be playing guitar when you’re ninety. I’ll be an arthritic ex-ballerina by the time I’m thirty-five.’
Ax sat on the bed. ‘Sage, I am not taking that. Fuck’s sake, try to hang on. I’ll be with you on the downhill slope to the grave in another six weeks. If I was to start recounting some of the charming things you used to say about me—’
‘Don’t!’ shouted Fiorinda. ‘Have some sense, both of you!’
‘Sorry,’ Sage rolled over. ‘Truly sorry. Rockstar tantrum. I’m despicable.’
Ax leaned down and kissed him. ‘Grow old along with me,’ he said, entirely without mockery. ‘There’ll still be good times.’ He looked at Fiorinda. ‘Does he get his present?’
‘He’s been really horrible.’
‘Yeah, but on the other hand he can’t help it, an’ I can’t be fucked to take it back to the shop. It’d be embarrassing. I’m supposed to have money to burn, and the woman’s a major artist. Brace yourself, big cat. You have to look in a mirror.’
They made him strip off his sweaters and stood him in front of the bathroom mirror in his slick black dungarees and shabby teeshirt. The present was a platinum and diamond torque. It lay at the base of his throat, warm from Ax’s body, stunningly beautiful.
‘I love it. My God, how much did this set us back?’
‘Dirt cheap,’ said Ax guiltily, ‘think of all those defunct catalytic convertors. Anyway, Fiorinda bought it.’
Fiorinda’s earnings were relatively unencumbered, apart from the tranche that went to the Volunteer Initiative. Ax and Sage were slowly being crushed, financially: an unexpected side-effect of power. Ax was chronically short of disposable income. Sage, still rich on paper, had to support a major share of the Heads’ sprawling feudal circus, besides his contribution to the Reich and Mary’s maintenance (Marlon’s trust fund was safely inaccessible).
‘Bend down,’ said Fiorinda. She unclasped the torque and wrapped it round his brow. ‘Mask.’ The living skull flickered into existence, adjusted itself and reappeared, its sombre beauty crowned by cold gleaming metal, diamond-fired.
‘Now that’s what a fallen angel ought to look like.’
The skull mugged, ‘Aw, shucks,’ and vanished again. He kissed them each in turn, and this became a complex, dynamic, three-person snog.
‘I know what we should do,’ cried Fiorinda, breaking out of it. ‘We should feed him half Rupert’s cake, to get his blood-sugar up, and play in the snow.’
‘Huh?’
‘C’mon Sage,’ said Ax. ‘We can fuck later. Snowball fight.’
They ate the apple cake, drank scalding real coffee with vodka chasers, and went outdoors. Not a staybehind was stirring under the dim, suffused blanket of the night sky. They found a bank and made angels, they fought with snowballs until their gloves were soaked and their hands hurt, and came to rest, Ax rolling spliff on his lap on the lid of his smokes tin, by the White Van. They’d been hoping to get something hot, but Rupert was not responding.
‘Hey, look,’ Fiorinda waved the spliff. ‘There are lights in the Blue Lagoon!’
‘That’s weird,’ said Ax, ‘on a night like this. Let’s go and check it out.’
He followed them, not suspecting a thing, while they examined the snow and remarked on the number of footprints, quite a crowd, what on earth’s going on? They went in round the back, through the bar known as Bartoli’s Hideout, through the curtains of marquee membrane, and Shazzah! The big tent was laid out for cabaret and full of people, colour, lights. He realised he’d been betrayed, spun round and found George and Bill and Peter, his brother Heads, his own band had appeared, barring the way, arms folded, grinning like idiots.
Practically everyone he knew in the world waited nervously.
‘Okay, okay. Thank you very much. Let’s party. Just don’t make a habit of it.’
The entertainment at Sage’s thirtieth birthday party, MC’d by Roxane Smith, hir old bones swathed in a fantastical fake-sable cloak, was a splendid sampler of Dissolution Music, featuring veterans of god-like status. The Few themselves didn’t play (leaving it to the professionals), but in one of the breaks Fergal Kearney, without leaving his place at a table of demi-gods, took up his harp. The techies quickly gave him a sound cone. The whole company fell into silence. The legendary Irishman, burnt-out as he was, commanded an audience. He played three beautiful instrumentals and then decided to embark on ‘Who Knocks’, Sage’s hideous, graphic domestic violence song from another lifetime. The ravaged voice was still compelling. Everyone held their breath.
Sage had stalked through the crowd, to where Fergal was sitting. He listened to the end and then moved in: big, potent and scary even without the mask.
‘You’re an insolent bastard, Fergal.’
‘I was just thinking,’ Fergal grinned up at him, sure of his bardic rights. ‘Ye’ve come a long way since the lad that wrote that, Aoxomoxoa. A fine long way.’
‘You’re right,’ said Sage, grinning back, blue eyes bright as the diamonds: grabbed Fergal’s ginger head and planted a kiss.
For the finale, the Chosen Few took the stage with a set of the most trashy, sentimental buddy-songs ever recorded. Sage armed himself with canapés and bombarded them: the band ducking and diving, Mr Dictator looking absurdly young, playing up a storm, all of them laughing like maniacs.
Fiorinda cheered and stomped with the rest. He is made of crystal, she thought, everyone can see what’s going on inside. Yet no one knows him completely. Not even Ax, not even me.
The crime of witchcraft returned to the statute books that winter, which Ax didn’t like at all, however cautiously “criminal witchcraft” was defined. But he had to make concessions, after Spitall’s Farm, and this was one of them. Most of the other fall-out was positive. Ax’s reluctant coup was even, arguably, a great artistic success, since it led to the making of Bridge House… And the Chosen became Jordan’s band, as justice demanded: but Ax would be an associate, a collaborator, a guest star—the way Fiorinda worked with DARK.
Fiorinda saw a new culture taking form, distilled by Ax Preston’s personal alchemy from the slavery and excess of rock and roll. Children would grow up with Ax’s manifesto, schools would teach the message. Make music, have fun, tend the garden. Above all, be good to each other: because that’s the only way we’re going to get through. It would be fake, it would be flawed, it would be mostly lip-service, the way these things always are: but it would be a damn sight better than what might have been. She was very uneasy about the Witchcraft Bill, given her weird secret: but it couldn’t be helped. She was working on a new album (which would become Yellow Girl). She had her tiger and her wolf, her Drop-Out charges and the Few. She was busy and happy… Afraid and happy.
Alain de Corlay—leading French radical who’d found it intellectually amusing to front Europopsters Movi
e Sucré, when this new world was in its birth-throes—came over to talk to Ax. He was intrigued by the Zen Self project, despite Aoxomoxoa’s close involvement. The Triumvirate went out to eat with him at a restaurant they’d never heard of. Fiorinda wore the dove grey suit that she’d had made—by George Merrick’s tailor, the master craftsman responsible for the Unmasked outfits—for the ‘Miss Brown, Mister Blue and Mister Red,’ video: which her lovers found extremely sexy. But the look made Fiorinda uncomfortable. Maybe that was it. Or the interminable length of the meal; or Sage and Alain, winding each other up: babbling about the dérèglement de tous les senses, the final assault of futuristic, magical science on all certainties… She was allergic to the word magic. Something went wrong, anyway. The fear got the better of her happiness, it weighed on her like a nightmare beast.
In the middle of the night Sage woke to hear Fiorinda crying, reached out for her and could not find her. She was gone, vanished, only her voice left behind, a desolate and terrified ghost… Panic flooded through him, he put on the light and she was crouched on the pillows, in her slip of a cream satin nightdress.
‘Hey, sweeheart, what is it, what is it? Sssh, hush, it’s okay, I’m here—’
‘I lost my baby, my little baby. What did I do with him? Oh dear, oh dear—’ She stared at Sage, eyes wide open but blinded in terror and grief. ‘Oh Sage, where is Ax? He’s gone, and my baby’s gone too, and it’s my fault—’
‘Ax is right here beside me, where would he be? Hey, Ax, wake up.’
Between them they soothed her and coaxed her back under the covers. When she seemed to be sleeping quietly they found dressing gowns and went to the kitchen. Ax sat at the table and took out a cigarette. Sage looked for the Ndogs, chose a popper and pressed it to his neck. Each addict to his own.
‘What’s that?,’ said Ax.
‘Just potassium, tobacco-head. I’d forgotten to take it.’
‘Why don’t you eat a banana?’
Eating a banana would not address the rate at which the neural-aligner called ‘snapshot’ drained the system of vital elements. He was Olwen’s best labrat; he couldn’t make the gaps between rides wide enough, but he wasn’t going to get into explaining what went on. He knew he could convince Ax in five minutes, that what he was doing was okay. He was saving the calming, reasoned arguments for when Fiorinda needed to be pacified.
‘Not so easy come by, these days. What d’you think? What should we do?’
The room was kitchen-white-bright: electric light in here, not ATP. They looked at each other, baffled, saddened. Fiorinda had been sterilised without her consent when she was thirteen—after she’d given birth to her father’s child, the little boy who had died when he was three months old. They knew she longed for a baby, and believed it was possible the sterilisation could be reversed. But she hated doctors, and refused to consider going to the whitecoats.
‘I don’t care if she never has a kid,’ said Ax. ‘Well, okay, I’m lying. I’d give a lot to see her with my baby in her arms. Or yours, big cat.’ But Sage had Marlon. ‘But what I want is Fiorinda. She nearly died, the first time. Did you know that?’
‘Yeah.’ Sage poked at the jumble of poppers in the incense box, sorting out a few gentle downers. ‘But she was a child then. It would be different.’
‘I think she doesn’t want to go to the doctors because… It’s a fuck of a thing to get into, fertility treatment: talk to Felice. Leave aside the Green dilemma, you can give yourself years of pain and misery, and end up with nothing.’
‘Are we sure it’s the baby thing? What else happened tonight? She wore the suit. You know, that suit pisses her off. She’s not Fiorinda any more—’
‘I love her in it. Makes me so horny. Our babe in gentleman’s tailoring is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘Me too.’ They grinned at each other. ‘But I’ll burn it, if it gives her nightmares. I was talking about the Zen Self. Could it have been that?’
‘Nah. Why on earth…? Fuck, we’ll have to tell her she’s doing this.’
‘I don’t know: I don’t want to make a big deal over a couple of broken nights.’
‘Okay. See how we think in the morning.’
Sage came and sat down, pulled his chair close and put his arm round Ax’s shoulders. Ax leaned back against him (the oxytocin thrill of all physical contact, that lingers for months or years), reached for a lighter and sparked up.
‘You ever thought of giving up, Ax? There’s other ways to get high.’
‘Knock it off,’ said Mr Dictator, firmly.
Dian had sent them an early copy of her book. Congratulations were in order, and they better be tactfully phrased, the media babe is proud of this one. Here’s the sword in the stone, on the front. Ax sighed, leafing the pages…
‘Strange woman. Pop-journalists live on a planet all of their own.’
‘As rebel-icons it is our fate to become corpses in the mouths of the bourgeoisie.’
‘Don’t fucking start… I hope she never finds out about why we did Bridge House. The crass actuality of Fiorinda’s horsetrading.’
‘Nah, she’d spin it to make herself look good. Never pity them, Ax.’
They looked at the pictures, already touching and nostalgic as old family photos. ‘Are you sure you want a kid?’ Sage yawned. ‘You know, they can wake up howling fifteen times a night, and do it for months—’
‘I’m sure. But not if it’s going to fuck her up.’
‘So this is what you do,’ said Fiorinda, coldly.
She stood in the doorway, hollow-eyed and tousled. ‘You get together in secret, late at night, and discuss loopy Fiorinda. I’m so sorry about the fatherhood yearnings. You want to trade me in for a fully working model?’
The two men stared at her, guilty as charged.
Don’t answer. There is no correct answer.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘You had a nightmare,’ said Ax, cautiously.
‘Oh, I see. Have I been having nightmares often?’
‘One or two,’ Sage admitted. ‘It was me and Alain, wasn’t it? Pissing you off.’
Fiorinda gave him a sour smile. ‘That’s right, change the subject. Full marks for low cunning, let’s talk about something else than babies. Okay. Fine… You are kidding yourselves. There’s no beyond all limits. What happens after the total derangement of the senses is you settle down and become an institution.’
‘Please forgive us,’ said Ax. ‘We won’t do it again.’
‘Whatever it was. We are tactless oafs, but we love you.’
‘Oh shit, okay. I’m being horrible. Come back to bed. I love you too.’
She did not break their sleep again, but she was starting to remind them of the damaged teenager they had known. One evening a couple of weeks later Ax was alone in the flat, reading government papers and wondering where his girlfriend had got to. Sage was in Reading, occupied with the Zen Self. At last Fiorinda called. He asked her where she was: she said she was out, and it transpired that she meant out with someone else, yeah, and why not? She would not be home before morning, so don’t wait up and I’m switching my phone off now.
He settled to his work again, feeling lonely and shaken.
There’d been a time in the past when Ax and Fiorinda had both played away relentlessly, and in the most hurtful way possible. So, not new bad news.
But what’s happening? What’s happening to my darling—?
Shortly Sage arrived, big and bouncy, growling about the fucking trains.
‘Where’s Fee?’
‘Out.’
‘Oh,’ said Sage, surprised. ‘Back soon?’
‘No.’ Ax kept his eyes on the documents. ‘She’s at the 69, with that Chinese drummer. Not sure of the name. Very pretty young guy. She won’t be home.’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘Ax, I don’t get this. She asked me to come up tonight.’
‘Welcome to my world.’
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‘Shit. What’s wrong? What the fuck is wrong?’
‘Don’t know. Could be that she’s nineteen, wild and free, whereas you are turning into an unavailable neuroscience nerd and I am a fucking bureaucrat.’
Ax went on reading. Sage, on the opposite couch, chewed the surviving joint of his right thumb and staring at the gas flames. Silence reigned.
At last Sage jumped up. ‘Ah, this is no good. Leave that. Get your coat, c’mon, you can drive me somewhere.’
Ax found himself guided, swiftly and surely (curiously, Sage was a good navigator when not behind the wheel) towards the south-west motorways.
‘Sage, what is this? I am not driving you to Cornwall.’
‘No, no. Devon will do fine.’
Ah well. What’s the point of being a rockstar dictator, if you can’t burn up some Private Transport Hypocrisy records once in a while. They reached Croyde at two in the morning. Sage led the way through the chill, sea-scented night, the sparkling moonlight, to a café with a weatherboard upper storey, and chucked gravel at a window. A woman’s torso appeared there rosily in lamplight, generous naked breasts, broad moon-apples eyeing them. She opened the window and leaned down.
‘Oh, hi, Sage.’
‘Hi, Mel. Keys, keys!’
‘Just a minute.’
She vanished, came back and chucked a bunch of keys into Sage’s cupped palms. The keys opened a cavernous workshop on the beach, smelling of wax and solvents; white dust hanging in the air. They suited up, took a couple of boards and headed for the water. Before the first plunge Ax was ready to rebel, IT IS FEBRUARY YOU MANIAC, but once he was in it the sea was thrilling: warmer than the air, full of tremendous life. The waves came in beautiful sets, straight as if drawn by a ruler, not big, but big enough. There was no rivalry, no competition, not tonight: it was pure joy.
When they’d had enough they sat on the beach, insulated by good suits and warmed by all that energy. The moon was fabulous. Ax sifted cold silky sand through his fingers. ‘Maybe we’re not quite over the hill yet.’
‘Nyah, this proves nothing. My dad’s over seventy and he surfs.’
‘Your dad is over seventy?’
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