Band of Gypsys

by Gwyneth Jones

  ‘We should be praying, loudly, outside the dining room windows.’

  ‘Testifying our witness,’ agreed Faz, gloomily.

  They were alone in their observance, as they’d been alone for midday prayer. The shock of having no oil in the bank had cooled a lot of modern Muslim ardour in the Diaspora. Attendance at Friday prayer had plunged, across the former UK. As much as you wish it could, no organised religion can thrive on spirituality alone—

  Faz Hassim, far from conventionally devout in the old days, had the air of sticking to his ethnic garb in defiant mourning.

  ‘We’ll soon be as dickless as the Christians. Can it be God’s will?’

  They laughed together: because it was the fasting month; because as different as their allegiance to Islam seemed, they both cared about such things.

  Faz unbent, allowing vulgar curiosity to unfurl. ‘How difficult is it, living with non-Muslim partners?’

  ‘It’s not a popular topic. I keep my observance to myself.’

  ‘Where are they today, Sage and Fiorinda? Don’t they respect your family?’

  ‘Sage may turn up later.’

  ‘None of the Few could make it, either?’

  ‘It wouldn’t be appropriate, Faz. This is not a rockstar occasion.’

  Ax looked up at the house, the first storey laden with blue torrents of wisteria in flower. A south face. The red and white roses in the terrace beds were opening, undamaged by the long winter. It reminded him of Bridge House, his lost heimat. Bridge House inflated in a disquieting dream.

  Nearly time to go in—

  Faz was peering at him with earnest curiosity. Well, now what?

  ‘Do you ever feel left out? On the sidelines, watching Fiorinda and Sage do their fevered, romantic Cathy and Heathcliff thang?’

  ‘All the time,’ said the President, long resigned to tactless questioning about the Hot Couple. (He pined like a lost child for Sage’s presence at his side, in place of the bearded Assassin, but that was his own business.) ‘Feeling left out is the essential threesome experience. Our relationship is like democracy, you know: a terrible idea, except for the alternatives.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Faz, embarrassed.

  ‘That’s okay.’ Ax glanced at his watch again, and at last came the deferential summons in his ear. ‘Time to go in. C’mon, let’s get into character—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Listen, Faz, could you do something for me?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘This afternoon, could you talk to my mum? I’ll be occupied, and I don’t like her to get ignored. Just stay by her, could you?’

  ‘Okay. I’ll do that.’

  Wallingham, built in 1906 for a newspaper millionaire, in erudite, oversized imitation of an Elizabethan fortified house, was supposed to be a National Treasure. Ax didn’t see it. Outdoors the place was like secure hospital thinly disguised as Hampton Court. The indoors was undeniably beautiful, but not to his taste: Art Nouveau in full grande horizontale spate, obsessively restored (there were records: you don’t blow a fortune on a place this size and forget to keep a scrapbook). It was a sumptuous period stage-set they walked into, with black-and-white uniformed servants everywhere you looked. They were directed to the Clouded Yellow Drawing Room, the one with the Klimt wall-hangings, to join the infidel.

  Back to that list—

  Get Jor and Milly to approve the real estate. Let’s face it, it’s those two we need to please. Once approved, quietly aquire said property. No money? No problem. Our credit is good, and if not, Sage’s dad will stake us & won’t feel a thing

  Meanwhile, poke around and turn up a face-saving excuse for the move

  This all takes time…

  Ax waved aside a flurry of respects (maliciously, he knew this set loved to play at courtiers), went over to Milly and sat on the arm of her clouded-yellow satin armchair. She’d lost weight again while he’d been in the US; she was looking very stylish. The last traces of old, down-dressing drummer Milly, with the don’t-care haircut and the gardener’s hands, had vanished. It was an obscure blow.

  ‘Okay, Mil?’

  There was nothing sexual left between them, not a twinge. But there was something… When Ax was tense he hated to be touched, a legacy of the hostage experience. She had not touched him, as he endured the social greetings circus. She did not touch him now as she looked up, locked hands in her lap. The new baby, Milly and Jordan’s second child, wasn’t here. He was with his Kettle grandparents. Ax had discovered this only when he arrived, and he had not been pleased—

  ‘I’m okay. Ax, there’s something I meant tell you.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Don’t be pissed off with Jor. It was my idea to send Troy away.’

  ‘Well, congratulations. Listen, could I use that? You didn’t want me and the baby and Jordan together at the same public party, something on those lines?’

  ‘Use, use, use… You’re a bastard.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m sorry. It’s your call. But may I?’

  ‘Anything that helps, Ax.’

  He nodded, smiled briefly, and moved on to join his brothers, who were standing together in front of the summer fireplace, where a huge jardinière of cut flowers sprawled under elven swirls and swathes of beaten pewter.

  ‘Y’all right, Jor? All right, Shay?’

  They talked a little. None of them had heard from Tot (Torquil), for a while. The fourth Preston brother, who came between Jordan and Shane, lived in Canada. He had an engineering degree and a proper job, he’d never been into music.

  ‘Lucky bastard,’ said Jordan, sulkily. ‘Me, all I wanted was to be a famous rockstar. I knew I had it in me. But it had to turn into something else, didn’t it?’

  Trust Jordan: he’d win prizes for Most Inappropriate Time To Pick A Fight. But Ax was not going to snap back. Today his heart was full of the knowledge that what he’d done to his family was terrible. You follow the light of destiny, you think you know the price. Then the real price comes and smacks you, from the last direction you expected, and you see it was obvious, all along.

  ‘D’you remember when we learned to play together, Jor? You and me and Mil in her mum’s garage, and then the four of us in the basement at Bridge House? How we’d talk all night about being Stone-Free Futuristic Artisans, firstborn of the new?’

  ‘No,’ said Jordan. ‘I remember how you used to talk, and it was crap.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ pleaded Shane, the peacemaker. ‘Did you see the ON AIR signs, Ax? They’re giving us a tv show, in here. Live at Wallingham, a quality new music showcase.’ He jerked his chin at Jordan. ‘He’s going to be the host.’

  Ax looked, and saw the violence that had been done to the distant, watered-silk yellow walls. There were several boxy, retro studio signs, knocked up in the gaps between fabulously valuable pictures.

  ‘When’s this due to happen?’

  ‘Dunno. Soon.’

  ‘Bet you’re jealous,’ said Jordan, with a smouldering glare.

  ‘I’m consumed with envy.’

  Then the Prime Minister came up, with his willowy Anglo wife.

  Greg Mursal was medium height, broad in the chest, with a bruiser’s ruddy, thickened features and vigorous hair cut en brosse. He had a Celtic tattoo job on his cheeks and chin, which to Ax combined strangely with his sleek business suit.

  The wife, Hilary Sallet, was in finance of some kind.

  Ax had heard this man’s name for the first time the day he was preparing to fight a bloody, mediaeval battle in the Vale of Avalon. Greg Mursal, who he? How come he’s my Prime Minister? With naivety that seemed incredible now, he’d thought someone Ax Preston didn’t know about couldn’t be important. But the smoke clears, and it’s the Greg Mursals who come out on top. Dissolution, Crisis, the monster called Rufus O’Niall, none of this had made much of an impression on Greg and his kind. The government of England was what it had always been: a feeding ground, rich pickings for the prop
er people.

  And how did they see Ax? An underclass youth-culture celebrity, boosted briefly into power by extraordinary times; who was now their property.

  ‘Fiorinda says Fred’s going to kill the Neurobomb stone dead,’ said the PM, ‘if he gets his second term. Is that what you believe too, Ax?’

  ‘I did until I heard it was an election promise.’

  ‘Hahaha, okay! Now, can we talk about you three moving in here?’

  ‘Maybe this isn’t quite the moment,’ murmured Hilary.

  ‘You know it’s what the country wants,’ Greg plunged onwards. ‘They want their Nouveau Royal Family, you don’t mind me calling the Prestons that? Living together in a beautiful, landmark palace. C’mon Jordan, tell the man. You’ll love it, Ax. You have your state of the art recording studio, your immix theatre, pool, sports courts, wonderful gardens, the most gorgeous countryside in England all around, and you don’t have to lift a finger, because Lady Anne takes care of everything.’

  Lady Anne Moonshadow, an old lady with a long record on the Right and Occult wing of the Green movement, was the current Speaker of the House of Commons; something of a break with tradition as she was not an MP. She wouldn’t be seen today. As the Prestons’ Housekeeper, she stayed tactfully out of the way when they entertained. According to the Weal she had a very special, organic relationship with Greg. Maybe they were the same person, in a mystic way.

  ‘Security’s good too—’ put in Jordan, glumly.

  ‘I wasn’t going to mention that, but it’s true. Brixton is fine, we all love funky old Brixton, but we have to look after you Ax, and we can’t do that, not the way we should, in the inner city.’ A thought struck the Prime Minister, or he made out it had struck him, widening his eyes as he gripped Jordan’s upper arm. ‘Have you told Ax about “Wallingham Live”? You’ll love this, Ax. A showcase for new music, er, interesting, Indie music. Recorded as live, with an audience, in this very room. You’re to be the host. Between acts you get a prime-time forum to talk to the people. Any topic you like, absolutely no holds barred—’

  Oh, the perfidy of Management. Ax and Jordan, fully interchangeable, looked at each other, for once in reasonable accord. Can you believe this arse?

  Ax laughed. ‘Lets talk about it in office time, Greg. Today, I’m celebrating Mum’s birthday. Excuse me.’

  Hilary was muttering as Ax walked away: probably telling Greg he’d screwed up, should have waited until Jordan was out of earshot. She was right but it was a saving grace in the man. He makes ridiculous gaffes, thank God for a human fault—

  It was quite a crush. Twenty five covers at lunch, and the afternoon guests were still arriving: Ministers, celebrity media folk, fashionable scholars. When the President moved, the focus of the room swivelled to follow him, like a multiple eye on a stalk. They all knew that Ax was powerless, a funky figurehead made of wood, but they had Hollywood minds. He was the money, for as long as he was called ‘President’, and because he’d recently “Headlined on Mainstage”. Whatever that meant. They didn’t have to pretend they liked the music any more, but Mayday was a big event.

  Ax strolled and smiled, exchanging words here and there; musing on the ironies of history. The room was full of box-fresh titles, created when David Sale, Prime Minister of Dissolution, had packed his reformed House of Lords with newly made Green peers. His cunning plan had been to divide the dangerous leaders from the Countercultural Movement masses, using the ju-jitsu of those great English vices, greed and snobbery. The joke was on David—who was dead, a casualty of ‘Fergal Kearney’s’ reign. The Green Peers ruled, and the mob did not vote any more.

  Straight from green to rotten, didn’t we used to sing that?

  The guests whispered about Ax’s private life. If you were Jordan, how would you feel about Milly’s sexy President-exy moving into Wallingham…? Could Ax be little Troy’s father, do the dates fit? Look how sulky Jordan is today, and Milly so nervous. Why aren’t Fiorinda and Sage here? It all fits together. Next to his brother Ax looks old, lean and worn in his shabby best red suit (the President’s austerity is an example to us all). Next to the President, heart-throb Jordan looks soft. If you were Mil, which of them would you pick? What will Fiorinda do, if she loses out?

  He reached the far side of the crowd, spoke to his mother and crossed back again, deriving malign amusement from the way he could tug that eye on a stalk to and fro. A bold young fashionista asked how did he like the Wallingham décor.

  Ax shook his head. ‘I don’t care for aspic, it’s like eating dolls’ house food.’

  She gasped, Oh!, round-eyed, reminding him of Allie, long ago. Maybe that’s where this babe had picked up the mannerism, Allie Marlowe in a magazine.

  ‘You plan to revision it? What an immense idea! But Wallingham is, like, sacred! How would you revision all this?’

  When did it get sacred? I never heard of the place before this year.

  ‘Ooh, I’ll get back to you. I’ll have to give that some thought.’

  By the windows to the terrace his sister Maya was surrounded by admirers (she had to be the belle of this ball). She flashed him a smile: the most solid of his siblings. Ax took the smile, banked it, and decided to inspect a table display of art objets, which placed him beside the Wiccan scholar, Jack Vries.

  ‘That’s very beautiful,’ said Jack, ‘Could I see it?’

  Ax handed over the piece he’d been examining.

  It was a small bronze: a hunting dog, seated, full of life; her narrow, graceful head turned to groom her sleek flank, her tail arched over her back. Obviously Celtic, and if not a copy about two thousand years’ old.

  ‘Very fine,’ said the scholar, Greg’s eminence grise. One of the ‘mistaken patriots’, but rumoured to have served his time: to be up for a Cabinet post in the next reshuffle. Devout Pagan, independently wealthy, (family money from an old Belgian electronics firm). A bit of a mystery man, otherwise. He was more sombre than Ax, in a suit of deep, midnight blue. ‘A lovely example of La Tene, isn’t it?’

  ‘Isn’t it a find from Wallingham Camp?’

  ‘Ah, yes, you’re right. In the nineteen twenties, in a back-filled pit at the threshold of the Sanctuary. It’s rare to find a votive offering so well preserved.’

  ‘I only recently discovered we have a ritual site next door. I’d thought “Wallingham Camp” was a minor hill fort. You know the place well, Jack?’

  ‘Not well,’ said Vries. He set the statuette back in its place.

  ‘Nor me. We must take a walk over there, see what we can kick up.’

  Faud Hassim, obedient to the bond of the fasting month, sat with Sunny Preston. He had thought Ax’s request strange, this was Ax’s mother’s birthday celebration (infidel habit). But it was true, the old lady had been sidelined, left to look after her grandson. How could a man neglect his mother like this? What had all these showy people to do with a family celebration? Every time you try to admire Ax Preston, he disappoints.

  He knew Ax’s widowed mother only by sight: a Christian from the Sudan, with dark skin and crisp greying hair. She rarely appeared in public. At a loss for topics he asked about the problems of running such a huge place, and was surprised to learn she had no part in the housekeeping. It was like living in a hotel, she said. But she wasn’t idle, she was fully occupied preparing for her university course. She and the child had a jigsaw beside them, spread on a scallop-rimmed drum table.

  ‘I intend to qualify as a lawyer,’ said Ax’s mother, calmly sifting pieces. ‘Though my eldest son threatens he will never speak to me again.’

  ‘Ax will never speak to you—?’

  ‘I mean son in law, maybe: Sage hates lawyers. I hope it was a joke. He has the sweetest nature of any man I ever met, but he’s full of mischief, isn’t he?’

  For Faz, this was a new view of Aoxomoxoa.

  The grandmother worked on the jigsaw. The five-year-old piled pasteboard towers, flicked them over with his thumbnail, and watched—furtively, inten
tly—the burly servants, in their formal black and white: who stood in pairs at the doors of the room, and at every tall window that lead to the terrace. Faud followed the child’s eyes, and experienced a shocking gestalt shift.

  Sunny glanced across to where her actual eldest son was talking to Jack Vries. ‘Tell me, Faud. How do you get on with this new method of calculating the Zakat? It’s a torturous work of the devil, according to my Ax.’

  Successfully distracted, Faud plunged into a detailed explanation.

  Greg got up a party to visit the newly restored Edwardian Real Tennis Court. Maya Preston was observed flirting with Jack Vries: which raised eyebrows. Jack’s sexual tastes were unknown even to his intimates. At four the whole gathering moved outdoors to tables under the lime trees, by the croquet lawn, for tea, and birthday cake and champagne. It was almost warm enough. The younger crowd set up a game.

  ‘The people want a conservative society,’ declared Greg. ‘With a small ‘c’, of course!’ (his audience chuckled obediently). ‘They’re not afraid of inequality, Ax. And they’re not afraid of Paganism, it’s our natural religion, anyone’ll tell you that, But nothing against Allah, it’s your futuristic tech that scares ’em off.’

  ‘My husband believes in an organic Counterculture,’ murmured Hilary.

  Ax took out a pack of tobacco cigarettes. A flunkey (the kind of flunkey who wears a shoulder holster under his jacket) swooped with a lighter; the President shook his head. He turned the cigarette between his fingers, Mr Preston’s worry beads.

  ‘I don’t know, Greg. In the old days, the money men and the mediafolk used to say: look, the people want to buy crap music, it’s their choice. But the people didn’t choose the playlist on the radio. They didn’t decide who had the promotion budget, or which bands had the sound turned up on the festival stage. The record company made those decisions: commercial success went to those who knew how to play the system, and that often doesn’t accord with talent, or even ability to play the instruments.’

  Greg Mursal grinned. ‘I think you’re kidding yourself, Ax.’