He knew she was lying: expertly, instantly protecting one secret with another. But what could he say? The light of spring was so beautiful. Beyond the tented town, a mist of colour moved like smoke through the budding trees on the other side of the river. She turned to him. No words, just a look, a sad gaze in which both of them were drowning—
‘Excuse me.’
Pearl Wing had appeared. Silver and Pearl were in principle pretty children, sweet oval faces, soft, pale brown hair and Chinese black eyes: but temperament came shining through. Pearl stood four-square, arms folded, tenacious: a bulldog puppy in a smocked dress.
‘Can I ask you something about your sex life?’
‘Go ahead,’ said Fiorinda, ‘if you feel lucky, punk. Try it.’
Pearl skipped a step backwards. ‘Who sleeps in the middle?’
‘Hahaha. Usually I do,’ said Sage. ‘Now clear off.’
Mary Williams was sending Marlon to boarding school, and Sage was over my dead body… Mary got her way, but as a trade-off Mar was allowed to visit Brixton. He developed a huge crush on his dad’s girlfriend: dropping her name all over the place, as he cut a swathe through the young scene at the Insanitude. My sort of step-mother, you know, Fiorinda… Sage hadn’t been allowed to have his son on a visit since Mar was four. The improvement in relations with his ex was a profound relief: ironic that it should come when his miraculous new happiness was running into trouble.
Fiorinda is unhappy: Ax is burying himself in his work.
And Sage is conflicted, seeing both sides.
One day he met Fergal Kearney in the Mall, Sage coming away from a meeting in Whitehall; Fergal from the Insanitude. The Irishman was heading for St James’s Park, to feed the ducks. Sage had been wanting to talk to Fergal. A problem was developing between the London barmies and the Kilburn Celtic street-gangs. The ‘Celtics’ were not necessarily Celtic Nations-origin, but the Few’s certified native Irish rockstar would impress them. Fergal had a lot of clout with the barmies as well. He’d been formally inducted, after Spitall’s Farm, with the proper militarised hippy ceremony: something Ax and Sage had never achieved. And probably they’d better not—
They strolled by the lake, and discussed Fergal’s possible role.
‘How are you keeping? You’re looking better.’
‘Fer a man with cirrhosis and a cancer fighting over his bones,’ said Fergal, ruefully, I’m in fine shape. A fine fockin’ defector I’ve turned out to be… I’m a crock, Sage, me darling. Some days, I’m jest incapable of rising from me bed.’
‘You don’t have to get up in the morning to help with this.’
‘Well, other days I’m not so bad. The ould witch is dosing me, and I believe there’s something in it.’ He gave Sage his gap-toothed grin. ‘Okay, I’m yer man. I jest hope I don’t say the wrong thing, and have yez punching me lights out over the negotiating table. That wud be unfortunate.’
Sage laughed and shook his head. ‘I don’t do that anymore.’
‘Aye. I was fergetting,’ agreed Fergal regrettfully. ‘Those days are gone.’
They sat on a bench. Ax’s England passed by, ignoring the Minister for Gigs and his companion. Fergal took out a greasy paper bag and threw crusts, judiciously favouring the little brown mallard ducks.
‘And when you’ve sorted the Kilburn Celtics,’ remarked Sage, staring at the scuffling waterbirds, ‘you can get rid of Benny Prem for me.’
Fergal shook his head.
‘Aye, I can understand how you’d feel about that feller. He has a slimy little little way about him—though I think I’ve niver seen him but on the telly. But there must be something in him, or Ax would throw him out. It won’t be that Benny has any secret hold over him, will it?’
Prem, Sage thought, was like the obnoxious favourite of some old style rock and roll megastar: the guy everybody hates and you can’t figure it, until you realise of course, he’s the man with the drugs. Not in this case, of course: but it was like an addiction, this refusal to let go. Benny was the one that got away, the one person who never succumbed to the Ax effect. And we can’t have that, can we?’
He sighed. ‘Benny’s been with us since the beginning. I think Ax feels we owe him something. But I think he’s dangerous. I’ve a strong feeling he has contacts with the so-called ritual magic persuasion. They still exist, you know.’
‘Like rats in the house. We fockin’ ought to have exterminated them, when we had the chancst. But it’s a wee bit difficult to see how, with non-violent methods.’
He won’t listen to me, Sage was thinking. Over Benny Prem or anything else. When did he stop listening? Is it Ax who has changed? Or is it me? All I know is that she’s unhappy, and that’s not in the contract. Being the third party in the threesome, like being the Minister for Gigs… It was okay, because I love him. But what if Fiorinda is unhappy? What then?
Fergal cleared his throat, venting a whiff of carrion sauced with red wine. Sage realised he’d been silent too long: the Irishman was looking uneasy.
‘No offence, Sage me darlin’ but if ye’re lairy about Mr Preminder, is it not Ax himself ye should be talking to?’
‘You’re right,’ said Sage, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’
He didn’t talk to Ax. He was afraid of where that conversation might lead.
In July they went to Tyller Pystri, the first time they’d visited their spiritual home all year. Sage stayed up late, working in his studio—a small, damp room, full of hardware, that had been the cottage parlour. Ax and Fiorinda were sleeping upstairs. Fiorinda’s nightmares had started up again, and they were sharing the burden. One night on, one night off. He was glad of a chance to work on the Unmasked immersion code undisturbed, but feeling depressed.
Why are we sleeping apart? It’s not right, especially not here—
A south-west gale was roaring, through the Chy gorge. He was distantly aware of it, through the code. It was a warm spell in a cold summer; but wild.
Something came into the room behind him. Menace and dread. He spun around, stripping off the eyewrap. Fiorinda stood there, naked. She crossed the room, a savage grin splitting her face, and leapt astride his thighs. Her nails bit into his shoulders. ‘Fuck me,’ she said. ‘Come on, fuck me, fuck me. Pretend I’m six years old. I’m your little girl, fuck me—’ One look in her eyes, and he knew he wasn’t going to talk her down.
He came out of the chair holding her and carried her into the living-room. He didn’t think she was strictly conscious, but when he reached for the Ndogs incense box she recognised that. She exploded, fighting like a wild cat, clawing at his face. Okay, no drugs… One of her dresses lay by the door to the stairs, the storm-cloud indigo. He pulled it over her head, pulled her arms through the sleeves, added a Guernsey from the back of the kitchen door, grabbed his keys and hauled her, struggling, out into the night. He hardly knew what he was doing, just knew he had to get her out of this. He got her into the Volvo, pushed her down, strapped her in…
Zoom round to the other side of the car. Drive. Out of the gates, can’t see a thing, ah, the lights, fucking retro handicraft, you have to switch them on, that’s better. He was on the track to the sea before he realised it hadn’t occurred to him to go and wake Ax. Shit, what if Ax is lying in a pool of blood? Oh, shit.
No blood on her. My God, what am I thinking? She’s just in one of her night terrors, this is what they’re like, I have to calm her down, that’s all.
They never took the Volvo beyond the house. The track was terrible, trough full of rocks but too bad. This is an emergency.
As I was walking through Grosvenor Square,
he sang softly,
Not a nip to the winter but a chill to the air
From the other direction, she was calling my eye—
Could be an illusion, but I might as well try. The first time I saw you, my darling, that cold night in Amsterdam, I said to myself, she is my soul, and it was no illusion. Not often in your life you get to be so right as I wa
s when I decided, come what may, I would never leave your side. What’s wrong with you, baby? This has been going on too long, and getting worse. We won’t set the quacks on you, but we have to talk about it. He kept on singing, clutching the wheel of Ax’s precious car in his ugly, untrustworthy hands, eyes glued to the potholes. A thin, small voice started to join him, from a long way off.
She wore scarlet begonias, tucked into her curls,
I knew right away she was not like other girls—
‘Where are we going?’
‘To the sea.’
‘But it’s the middle of the night.’
‘Best time. Let’s finish “Scarlet Begonias”.’
He kept on singing, up the hill and across the cliff-top pasture, a mile and a half of inchworm, painful driving. She didn’t speak again, but she sang with him, their golden oldies, things they’d taught each other when she was fourteen. The path down the cliff had suffered since last year. It was beyond a joke, he kept an iron grip on her arm: but the cove was just what he wanted, a moon-curve of white sand swept clean by the gale, glimmering under the cloudy, starlit sky. He stripped off, stripped her of the Guernsey and her dress, and ran with her into the boiling, buffeting water. Fiorinda started to laugh, breasting the tumult and leaping like a dolphin. The change was so immediate it shocked him, but trust me, said the ocean, and he did, but he didn’t let her out of his reach.
She jumped into his arms, wet hair, arms and legs, slippery as melting ice.
‘Had enough?’
‘Yes!’
They plunged out into the air again, and now the south-west wind didn’t feel cold. Fiorinda wrung salt water from her hair. Sage dragged a plank of driftwood into a windbreak shelter of boulders and they cuddled close, a nest of clothes around them. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it. This time you must. Do you remember coming down to me tonight?’
‘I remember being in the car, and you were singing. What happened?’
‘You were sleepwalking. Tell me about the nightmare. Will you tell me?’
‘No.’ She grabbed his crippled right hand, holding onto it hard. ‘Oh, well, yes. It won’t sound like much. I had a bad dream… Then I thought I woke up and someone was fucking me, a horrible fucking that I had to bear because I had no right to refuse.’
‘Shit. Is that the nightmare? Is that what you haven’t been telling us?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I forget. I’m being raped by someone I can’t refuse, so that’s not rape…and I can’t open my eyes. Then I manage to open my eyes, and the man who’s fucking me is you, or Ax, but I know it’s really my father. And then I wake up.’
‘Your father?’
‘If it’s you, it’s not so bad. I can say, fuck off you sad bastard that’s ridiculous, you can’t fool me. But if it’s Ax, that’s awful, because it could be true. I try not to believe it, but Ax is getting so different. He could be turning into m-my father, the rock lord, and that’s… I think that’s what all this is about. M-my father is trying to m-make me hate Ax.’
‘What? Fiorinda, slow down. Your father? You mean Rufus O’Niall?’
She looked at him. The babbling girl-child vanished, as if a wave had gone over her. Fiorinda’s invincible defences rose, shutting him out.
My God. What is going on?
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I don’t mean literally, Sage. I mean that’s what my nightmares are about. It’s classic, isn’t it? My father fucked me, and now that I’m grown up it all comes back, all the suppressed memories. I just have to get over it. I have to get him out of my head. Then I can go to the doctors and we’ll see if I can get pregnant, but it won’t matter if I can’t because maybe we can adopt a baby, and I’ll be free and we’ll be happy.’
Now she was crying, the tears spilling down her face. He pulled the Guernsey round her shoulders and held her close. ‘You should have told us. Darling little Fiorinda, trust me. One day he will be gone. One day, you’ll look for that black hole of an obsession and it just won’t be there. You’ll know that you could see him coming, and you wouldn’t even bother to cross the street.’
‘You mean Mary,’ said Fiorinda softly.
He sighed. ‘Yeah. I mean Mary… I mean, I understand. I always did.’
They moved apart. Fiorinda hung her head, hiding behind a rampart of salt-wet curls, and drew in the sand with her finger.
‘It’s true I was obsessed with him. Even right up to Dissolution Summer, he was all I cared about. But you’re wrong, Sage. I’m ages past that stage. He means nothing, I just want to be rid of him and…somehow I can’t be.’
‘When we first met,’ said Sage, ‘I was afraid I’d remind you of your father, because I’m so fucking big, and you like a child in my arms. I thought you could never possibly want me. It used to make me desperate.’
‘Sage. Idiot. It never crossed my mind. Sometimes I think you’re me in another skin, which can be weird, but I never thought you were my father… Oh! Is that why you wouldn’t fuck me when I offered, that time?’
‘Hm. As I recall, it wasn’t a very appealing offer.’
‘Hahaha. Nobody talks to Aoxomoxoa like that! You said you weren’t so hard up you had to jump my scrawny little underage bones, and I was so mortified.’
He smiled, between rueful and tender. ‘Well, I lied.’
‘I was so fucked-up, when you met me. I was like spoiled meat.’
‘I knew. I knew you felt like that. And I was scared, Fiorinda. I didn’t dare to touch you, because you were so fragile and hurt, and I’m a coward. I was afraid I’d break something, the way I always do… It was Ax who took on that job.’
The wind and the sea roared. The beach had an unearthly luminescence as their eyes grew accustomed to the night. ‘You gave me unconditional love,’ she said, ‘when no one had ever loved me before. It’s something I can’t ever repay.’ She climbed into his arms, with starry eyes and a sweet and joyful smile. ‘My Sage, you are so good to me. Did I ever tell you, I’m madly in love with you?’
Fucking-with-intent to cut Ax out would seem the greater crime, but holding her naked in his arms, feeling nothing but tenderness, he knew he’d never been in worse danger.
‘C’mon. Into the sea again. One rush, and then home.’
On the way back they stopped at the waterfall pool to rinse off. He carried her under the holly trees (ouch, ouch ouch) and doused them both in the churning pot, unbelievably much colder than the sea, which the Chy had pummelled for itself in a dark rocky dell. It was magical, but his hands were starting to act up. When they were dressed he offered her the keys. Fiorinda could drive, though she rarely wanted to. She refused, laughing, oh no, I’m the girl, you drive. He was too proud to explain. He tackled the lumpy descent to Tyller Pystri with extreme caution, Fiorinda beside him in his old Guernsey and her rustling skirts, singing under her breath and smiling angelically.
‘What’s up with you, brat?’
‘Nothing. I’m very, very happy and I love you very much.’
‘Nyah—’ He switched on the skull, rotting flesh and lively maggots version. Fiorinda yelped, and the Volvo swerved. Crunch. They both jumped out to look. Oh, shit. The left headlamp had collided with a corner of jutting rock.
‘I was driving,’ said Fiorinda.
‘Don’t be stupid. I was driving.’
They stared at each other, for too long.
‘I shouldn’t have been driving,’ said Sage. ‘My hands are fucked.’
Silently they got back into the car. Fiorinda nursed it home, through the gates and onto the hardstanding under the twin beech trees. There was a light in the living-room.
‘I’ll do the talking,’ said Fiorinda. ‘It was my fault. My pathetic nightmare.’
Ax didn’t make a fuss about the car. They spent the rest of the night together in Sage’s bed. But things were not good. In the morning Fiorinda remembered some of what she’d said on the beach, and was very frightened. She decided she would walk to the garage shop to see if they had
any chocolate. Leave them alone together: it was the only trick she knew. When Fiorinda had left Ax came into the studio and sat in a tattered armchair.
‘Tell me what really happened?’
Sage tried to tell him.
‘What d’you mean, she frightened you?’
‘What I say. She was like not herself, literally, when she came downstairs to me. It was horrible. And you slept through this?’
‘I slept through it. Fuck, look who’s talking. You should’ve woken me.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t, I don’t know how that happened. Could we keep to the point? I took her to the beach because…well, to break the mood, and then she started talking about her father. Listen to me, Ax. She said things, really strange things, that, if I took them a certain way, I would be very scared—’
‘You’re telling me Fiorinda’s going nuts?’
‘No…’ Sage could not say what was on his mind. It would take too long, he would have to go back to first principles, and it would be beyond belief. ‘I don’t know what to think. We know what happened to her. We know things like that have a way of surfacing years later. That’s what she says herself, and it could be true, but I’m afraid there’s something else, something worse—’
‘What are you on about? She’s been under horrible stress for years, and now it seems like every woman friend we have is either pregnant or dandling a baby. It must be fucking painful, humiliating even, and it brings back the hell she went through when she was thirteen. What more do you need? We knew she was vulnerable, we knew what we were taking on. We can help her through. But you’re not helping by getting melodramatic in the middle of the night, taking her skinny dipping, for fuck’s sake—’
‘Crashing your car.’
Ax shrugged. ‘Oh, forget that. I knew you’d dent it sometime.’
‘We’re too old for her,’ said Sage, abandoning all hope of a serious discussion. ‘I expect that’s why I got the father stuff. She wants a boyfriend her own age and she doesn’t know how to tell us. Come to think of it, nothing more likely.’
‘Bastard,’ said Ax. ‘You know so fucking well how to screw me up. You always did.’
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