‘Then don’t.’
‘Leave it, Ax,’ advised Fiorinda, bored.
‘It can’t be easy. Were you fooled by that “oh, we’re doing this farmed fish thing as a fashion statement”? They’re struggling, the signs were everywhere.’
‘Let them eat lentils.’ said Sage. ‘I do.’
He got the pints in, and set them off the tray with a glare. ‘Yes, Citizen Ax, I know they’re brim glasses, and no I’m not going back to ask her to top them up.’
‘Don’t be so fucking childish Sage. Ax didn’t say a word!’
Ax picked up an ancient copy of Weal and left them to it, a strange warmth growing behind his breastbone, a memory of that garret in Montmatre.
Back at Matthew Arnold Mansions Fiorinda said she deserved a proper bath, and she would have one. Ax sat and teased her, while she turned an alarming scarlet under the bubbles, and carried her into the bedroom wrapped in a big towel. Sage was lying naked on the bed, propped on one elbow: smiling like he’d found his temper.
‘Wha’s that you got there?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ax. ‘But they scrub up very rosy and juicy-looking.’
‘I’ve heard they’re edible.’
‘Yeah, me too. I’m gonna give it a try.’
‘You want me to look after the front end, while you do that?’
‘If you would.’
He started on the delicate skin on the inside of each elbow. Took a gentle bite at the firm, yielding muscle below the curve of her ribcage, each side; then the hipbones need some biting. He pressed his cheeks, his lips, his brow, to the fresh, damp living warmth of her inner thighs, and at last nuzzled into this tough silky curling mat of hair, the salty, liquid goal so familiar, oceanic, always new.
Fiorinda lay in her towel, taking Sage’s kisses.
‘If I let you go, will you try to escape, strange creature?’
‘You’d better hold me down. Just a little bit, to be on the safe side.’
When she let him know he’d finished eating Ax sat back on his heels and wiped his mouth, every fibre of his body thrumming, desperate to take one of them, hard and quickly, but it’s fabulous to be so desperate, he could hold on.
‘All yours, brother.’
‘Hey,’ said Fiorinda, equably, ‘I think Ax gets held so I can eat him, now.’
‘She’s right, you know. Fair’s fair.’
‘Well, okay. I can see how that would work.’
He woke hours later, rising from rare oblivion into a state of undefined anxiety that he recognised. Always the same, after our desperate victories. You’ve been focused on one thing, it’s gone, and all the rest rushes in, disordered. The treatment is to get the fears in a line, make a list. The drop-out hordes problem, now known as the camps. The devastation of civil rights, not a big issue in our day, horrible and alarming now. Hints at what Jack Vries really does for the PM, to make himself so useful… If I thought I could lever Mursal out of power, I was dreaming, this regime has deeper roots than that, but there will be things I can do, and I’ll do them. He felt that happiness inside, waiting like a trapped bird, for the cage door to open—
He rolled over, and took Fiorinda’s warm, sleep-softened body in his arms.
‘No more family gatherings,’ she mumbled. ‘Not for at least twenty years.’
‘Okay.’ He kissed her closed eyelids, ‘Fiorinda, would you marry me?’
Fiorinda opened her eyes, nose to nose with him.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I don’t mind, if you like.’
‘What about you, big cat? Sage? Are you awake?’
‘I think you should have asked me first,’ said Sage. ‘I’m the oldest.’
‘Sorry, I’ve never done this before.’ Ax sat up. ‘Okay, I didn’t mean to do it like that, it slipped out. But I’ve been thinking. We love each other, we’re going to stay together, and have children if possible, and children want their parents to be married. The way I see it… I’m not asking you to marry a man, Sage.’
‘Good, because it’s too much of a break with my style.’
‘You’d never live it down. What I see is, we two would both marry Fiorinda, and you would marry both of us, Fio. How does that sound?’
‘Fine,’ said Fiorinda, thinking she could disabuse them of this weird notion later, without hurting Ax’s feelings.
Sage turned on his back, hands behind his head. Ax seemed to be talking about a religious ceremony. The guitar-man must have consulted his patron in the Faith, luckily a Q’ranic jurist, and Mohammad has tracked down a precedent: some lively Mughal Caliph and his beloved Vizier, sharing a bride. This is a lightning decision he’s been mulling over with the mullahs for months. Can’t I have any private life? Ah well, that’s what you get for shagging the king of England and what the fuck.
‘Yeah, okay. I’m in.’
Another aspect came to mind. ‘But I won’t convert.’
‘Oh,’ said Fiorinda, ‘Nor will I. Sorry, Ax. I didn’t think of that.’
‘I’m sorry. Did I mention Islam?’
They did not get the chance to agree he had not. Ax exploded out of bed and grabbed at clothes, his eyes blazing in hurt and fury. ‘Did I say the word Islam? I know fucking well you hate my religion. Okay, forget it.’
‘Ax, don’t—’
‘Ax, Ax. Hey, lissen—’
No use. Slam, bang, crash. He was gone, leaving them gasping.
‘That’s your fault,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Idiot.’
Meetings paved Ax’s day in slabs of weary words. One or two, hidden in the dross, he’d arranged for himself, and they were useful. The rest was insulting make-work, designed to keep a puppet harmlessly occupied. Late in the afternoon he walked down to the Victoria Embankment trailed by his minders, relentless shadows, and stood staring at the water.
Neither of them had called him. Did he have a home to go to?
Something nudged his elbow, and though his reflexes were razor sharp for casual touches, he didn’t recoil. Fiorinda’s hand appeared, beside his own on the parapet, lining up so their braided gold Triumvirate rings were level. He looked round: her grey eyes were watching him with such tender understanding that he wanted to fall at her feet. A sigh. He looked the other way and there was Sage, arms folded, gazing dreamily ahead of him.
‘How many ceremonies d’you reckon, Sah? One for each region, and one for every major belief system? We’re going to need a fuck of a lot of cake. And I think Fee ought to have a different new dress every time.’
‘Damn right. Hm. I’ve never been inside a working Christian church. I hope I won’t be obliged to into something ghastly, and fly out of a window.’
Ax’s heart rose from the depths of his stupidity, into golden light.
‘You don’t have to be nice. I hate weddings. It was a crass idea.’
‘I love you,’ said Sage. ‘Will you ever believe that? I would be happy to say so in public, swear it til death do us part. I didn’t mean to piss you off, I was tactless and I apologise. I’ll do it. Why shouldn’t we do it?’
He took Ax’s face between his hands and kissed him, fuck-the-public-place: an embrace that Fiorinda thought she should not join, but they pulled her in. Then they drew apart, looking at each other ruefully: acknowledging the pull of that cloud of white tulle, the chaste beauty of morning suits, the gold and scarlet and the bride led around the fire. The drunken friends and gatecrashing paparazzi—
‘You were right to raise the question,’ said Fiorinda. ‘But it’s not for us.’
‘I know. It’s for some other people.’
The armed guards followed, as they walked by the great river.
The make-over of Buckingham Palace had ripped through the old Insanitude club venue, laying waste to the Few’s memories in the name of Ax’s Restoration. They were warned by Allie and Dilip, friends on the inside, when ruin reached the Balcony Room: the Reich’s Office, the centre of their rule. Rows of workstations had already been stripped out, walls bared, all thei
r longterm-makeshift fittings vanished. The battered schoolroom tables were roped off, mysteriously intact.
‘It hasn’t been recorded yet,’ said Allie. ‘The decorators have to take a video, and number all the parts, so they get it right when they put it all back.’
‘What’s it going to be?’ asked Cherry. ‘Some kind of shrine?’
‘Yeah. With copies of the Tussauds waxworks, I think.’ They’d all been ‘immortalised’ in Madame Tussauds, at the height of their fame.
‘That is rank. Who asked our permission? Are we paying for this?’
The Reich, a registered charity, had made a sizeable contribution to the restoration funding. Their financial controllers had found this was affordable, though the Volunteer Initiative was as always desperately short—
‘We should make them buy copies of our virtual avatars from California,’ said Chip. ‘So at least poor old Digital Artists get some money back.’
‘Not a chance. Tha’s labscience. Carn’ have that.’
‘The Citizen King has to have a respectable official residence,’ sighed Allie. ‘They aren’t even asking you to live here. Just be thankful you guys got away with turning down Wallingham. Our admin will be farmed-out: but I get a new office downstairs, so I’ll still be here. Just take whatever belongs to you, last chance.’
They poked around, unearthing dust-bunnied items of clothing, scraps of food; forgotten mascots from behind the radiators.
‘I feel like a redundant yuppie,’ said Dora. ‘Oooh, Sage, watch out, you’re on the wrong side of the rope!’
‘I’m an exhibit.’
‘We are not spooked by any of this,’ declared Verlaine. ‘We shed copies of ourselves all the time. Let the public worship our old toenail clippings, we don’t care. Move your arse Sage, we have to sanctify the Triumvirate chairs.’
Sage moved his arse and wandered, staring at pale patches on the dirty candy-pink walls, the Triumvirate’s yuppie box under his arm. The Adjuvants were laying a fragment of arcana on each seat: a dessicated pondweed cracker here, a fossilised lump of canteen veggie curry there; a venerable hairgrip that may have belonged to Fiorinda. Or possibly to Her Majesty Elizabeth the Queen Mother, as the sub-radiator strata might have become confused.
Anne-Marie had come up from Reading, to take a spiritual reading and the end point of so much history. She’d been standing in front of the Balcony, eyes closed, taking deep breaths. ‘I feel nothing,’ she announced.
‘That’s okay, Ammy,’ said Dora, while others rolled their eyes.
‘It must be it was time to move on. Reelly, I’m more worried about getting through Lughnasa.’ Anne-Marie picked up a broom left by the decorators, and absentmindedly began to sweep the floor.
‘Lughnasa—?’ repeated Rob. ‘Is that the one in August?
‘Don’t bother, AM,’ said Allie. ‘The floor’s probably going to be converted into a sacred wall in Tate Modern. They’ll want the dirt left on it. Why Lughnasa?’
‘Or Hungry Ghosts. Something always hits us round there. Think about it.’
Sage took his box away with him across Green Park, longing for the grey Atlantic. But the cottage in Cornwall where the three of them had fallen in love, Tyller Pystri, the Magic Place, was out of reach. They were afraid to think about it, in case they attracted the State Nostalgia merchants. A blue plaque and a car park, oh, spare me that. He was going to meet a former Reich camp follower at the Royal Academy, where an exhibition of Sage Pender’s immersion cells was about to open.
He’d been interviewed by Dian Buckley many times: she’d written a book about Ax. He didn’t expect any surprises. They trod the august halls together, (closed to visitors for the benefit of this interview); getting videoed.
She asked him how he felt about having his work elevated to such heights.
‘It’s okay, I suppose.’
‘Oh, come on, Sage. That’s the kind of provocative thing you’d have said a decade ago. You’re a grown up now.’
A decade ago, he thought my language would have been con-fucking-siderably more colourful. He was tempted to explain that his triumph was soured by the way the RA had ‘acquired for the nation’ notepad material that had gone missing in the Green Nazi occupation. Sage had not made a gift, nor seen any money.
Waste of time. I’d just sound like a stingy bastard.
‘This is not the way I’d have done it, see. You can display cells live: so anyone lookin’ at them gets a dose of the direct cortical, the sensory percept code I built into the light waves. The way they are here, they’re stone dead.’
‘But immix perceptions are fake. These, er, drawings are real art.’
‘Why, thank you…’ He addressed the cameramann. ‘Is that a digital cam?’
Dian’s crewperson looked alarmed. ‘Uh, yeah, er, Sage—’
‘Shame. You aren’t storing analog record of light on colours, angles, surfaces, like the back of Dian’s lovely head. You’re storing bits. But if you was using your bare eyes, it would still be code, everything is. We live in a virtual world.’
But it’s a shame to tease the crewpersons. Soon he dropped out, dissatisfied with himself and knowing he was safer on auto: answering nicely while he thought about other things. Dilip’s health, still okay, thank God. Fiorinda, whose period was late again, just barely, and this must not be mentioned. Will I ever do anything new? Or is that all over, fit only to be pinned on walls like dead insects? And it’s bullshit, Anne-Marie: summer is awful because summer is festival hell. Terrible things have happened to us any time of year. He was even thinking of Dian, whose eyes were greener, her tits more peach-perfect, upright and splendid than ever. Amazing the way trash goods like boob jobs are still available. Wonder what’s under her clothes; and what’s she going to do when she gets really rich? Have the lot chopped off?
Still, a woman he could near enough look in the eye, he’d always liked her for that. He had once fucked the lovely idiot Dian, mainly for the charm of her height. George had taken him to task, he remembered. Do not fuck the mediababes, boss. Everybody does it, everybody regrets it. You think she knows she’s a sandwich, does she fuck, you’re gonna hurt her feelings and that’s—
Dangerous?
Where did that flick of alarm come from? How could Dian Buckley be dangerous? Now she was asking him when had he realised he was gay.
‘I’m not.’
‘Oooh, I’m not allowed to say that, am I? When did you realise you were—’ Dian smiled indulgently. ‘Bisexual?’
‘I’m not… Dian, if you’re gay nation by birth, I b’lieve you know it before you are five. But anyone can have a same sex lover, or vice-versa, that’s just normal. I can’t believe you’ve never tried it. You should.’
‘Sage, I don’t know. I remember the one night stands, the macho posing. You were a textbook case. But okay, how do you feel about being in an unorthodox sexual relationship that’s a national obsession? A religious icon, to many people.’
They’d left the exhibition. They were in the coffee shop, still with the team in attendance, facing some teeny patisserie, a bottle of dry white wine and another of fancy water. Something had snapped him to attention. What was it?
‘Religious? Like, Pagan religious?’
‘O come on, you know you’re sacred. Look, I have you on my key-chain.’
‘Ah, well that proves it.’
She showed him, laughing merrily. She had one of those silver charms on her chain (no keys), depicting tiny Ax ’n Sage ’n Fiorinda in a three-way fuck.
‘Will you touch it for me? That’d increase the potency fantastically.’
Damn. It had been a crime against Heads Ideology to vet interview questions. Let them print what they like, stupid fuckers, was the only attitude. But maybe Ax and Fiorinda’s lover ought to change that policy, because his mood was spinning away from him. I can’t do this. I can’t remember how irreverent and outspoken I’m allowed to be about the appropriation of my sex-life by brain-dead so-called “Pag
ans” and the trinket industry. Let’s change the subject? Lets talk about how the government takes every cent I earn, gives me pocket money and spends the rest on razor wire—
But he had never (not since the hell of his own making he’d endured over what he did to Mary Williams) let an inteviewer get to him. He grinned at the green-eyed babe, took the charm, and handed it back with a smile.
‘There, rub that on your struggling petunias. I can’t promise anything.’
He was still wondering what had given him the jolt, when the silver charm, glinting on Dian’s well-turned hip, returned it to him and sent him to another place. Darkness, a smell of ooze and smoke. He was looking for something he didn’t want to find, a tightening net, something heavy—
‘Are you saying, in a snidey way, you don’t believe in magic? But Sage, you’re the Zen Self Champion! You went beyond death, you fought an occult duel with Rufus O’Niall that saved the world. For many people, intelligent sceptical people, you’re the reason why we’ve all come to believe in magic!’
The champion poured himself a glass of wine, eyes down. He needed to concentrate on what had just happened to him, but it would have to wait.
‘I never went beyond death, Dian. Tha’s a misconception.’
Dian recalled the physical magnificence of Aoxomoxoa, the fabulous young bull he had been, when she was the Reich’s favorite interpreter, the only one who understood. The sweet dream she’d had, and the morning when she’d found out it was over, that he’d just spent the night with Fiorinda. She’d had to deal with that betrayal in public, without warning, a humiliation she would never forget—
He’s still got to be one of the most beautiful men in the world, she thought. But he’ll never be what he was when I had him.
‘Hey, wow, when did you start drinking again? Isn’t that terribly irresponsible, when you’ve had a liver transplant?’
‘Not a transplant, it’s a regen. Livers are easy, they grow like—’
‘It was an intensive care bed. Okay, you won’t talk about magic. I suppose that means you won’t do any yogi tricks for me, oh bodhisattva?’
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