Band of Gypsys

by Gwyneth Jones

  They’d had a faint hope Keith Utamore might be an emissary from Pan-Asian Utopia, but Fiorinda had tried him, and he wasn’t. Ah well, can’t expect everyone who walks into the gin-joint to add to the hectic intrigue.

  ‘The Pacific is full of sharks and pirates. Or is it the China Sea? Indian Ocean? I’m not good at Geography. And he’s scared to go by air, if there were any ships, because of hydrogen accidents.’

  ‘Has he used our intercity railway system at all?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. I thought it would be unkind.’

  ‘I was blushing fer my ignorance too,’ said Sage. ‘I’m gonna try hard to catch the evening news, when I’m on my “weekend” leave.’

  Ax had surrendered under terms, and his terms had been accepted. He could criticise the government all he liked from behind the bars of his gilded cage: no one censored his lyrics, he was trusted to talk to foreign journalists. But he was still under a death sentence, they were all still prisoners, and how long could this state of affairs continue? Greg Mursal, last time they were interrogated, a week or so ago, had told them Sage was to be allowed out. He could talk to Allie Marlowe, and to his father. Greg had mentioned those two, specifically: which meant something, they weren’t sure what.

  Ax had been hustling for better conditions, including parole for his partners: but now they were scared. The red room was safety. Sage outside would have wandered far, and Ax and Fiorinda would be afraid for him.

  Sage and Ax vacated the armchair, and walked around, restless.

  Fiorinda arranged her water bottles, listening as they rehearsed the possibilities. Could this parole be the first step to a negotiated plea? Sage must speak to lawyers, must try to get sight of any statements that had been made. What had become of Lord Vries’ security guards? They’d been told that there were ‘unimpeachable witnesses’ to ‘a scuffle’, ‘apparently between Lord Vries and Mr Preston’. As if there was room for doubt as to what had actually happened… And yet this was the incident that was supposed to prove Ax was a monster.

  No one had asked Sage for an eye witness statement, and he didn’t think he should volunteer…

  Suppose, (admitting nothing) the werewolf idiocy were dropped. Suppose Ax were accused of the unpremeditated thumping of the Wiccan scholar? How would that go? Compensation, wouldn’t that be the Celtic way? We could do compensation… It was a puzzle, with hopeful touches. There could be a way through. We may be able to put this behind us.

  Talking to the ghost, motormouthed: it always took them a while to recover from ‘Rick’s Place’. A spliff would have helped, but they’d finished their supplies long since and no more were forthcoming. Smoking was not allowed: which caused Ax suffering. No alcohol either, except what they could cadge from the punters when they were on duty… At last the dead silence of the shuttered room returned, like the darkness that flows back, underground, when you switch off a torch. Fiorinda curled up in the red chair. Sage and Ax sat with their shoulders propped against the bed: black jackets discarded, bowties untied.

  Could we saw through the locks on the shutters behind the arras, with a nailfile? Could we suborn our guards, find a secret passage? But they never spoke of escape. They did not plan to escape. They planned to win this difficult and delicate game. We’ve seen worse, we’ve been in rougher spots than this and turned things round.

  Fiorinda watched the two men. ‘I think you are being galley slaves.’

  They grinned at each other. ‘Hahaha, yes we are,’ said Ax.

  ‘What do you do when you’re being galley slaves?’

  ‘We’re on the bench,’ said Sage. ‘Chained together, hauling our oar—’

  ‘Blisters rubbed raw, and we have to keep going, boom crash, boom crash boom crash—’

  ‘And then you have sex.’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Sage.

  ‘We get whipped all the time,’ Ax went on, with enthusiasm, ‘and its dark, and we have manacles that gall our wrists horribly, ankles too and—’

  ‘Sometimes, rarely, we’re allowed to sleep under our bench.’

  ‘And then you have sex—?’

  They shook their heads. ‘You don’t understand, Fee. It’s not like that. It’s very sexual but not directly about fucking. That’s the sexy thing about it.’

  ‘I want to be a galley slave.’

  ‘You’re too small,’ said Sage, quickly. ‘You couldn’t handle the oar.’

  ‘Bastards. I don’t care. You are just idiots. What’s the use of a sexual fantasy where you don’t even have sex?’

  ‘All right, okay,’ said Ax. ‘You’ll be pissed off, but you may as well know, when we are galley slaves we keep you under the bench, folded up very small.’

  ‘To keep you safe,’ explained Sage, with a naked look. ‘Because we’re all right, as long as you’re safe—’

  Fiorinda thought of a way that she could join them on their bench, and haul that massive oar. As if looking into a mirror, she saw a big chestnut-skinned man in flamboyant middle age. He had a curling mouth, offensive eyes, shining, black ringlets. It was her father, Rufus O’Niall. She kept him on a leash in a sealed compartment in her mind… Ax and Sage knew this. But she wasn’t going to remind them of it, not now, not in this place.

  ‘Sage, if it isn’t cancelled, and you do get out, will you bring me some Volvic water?’

  ‘Yep, er, if I can. Any other brand that would do?’

  ‘Volvic. I like the picture. Maybe Buxton, if you can’t be bothered.’

  ‘Gimme a break, Fiorinda. I’ll do my best. You got any orders, Ax?’

  ‘Liquorice and wine gums.’

  ‘Oooh, tha’s not very healthy Mr President. Organic liquorice?’

  ‘No. I don’t want to chew a fucking root, I want sweeties.’

  Not a word of the mortal dread of parting. Not a word, never, of how it really felt to be trapped in here. A palace is a place where people never speak their minds. How different from that night two months ago when they had faced death together, with such sensual abandon. But the doom passes, you find that you are still in the fight, so you keep fighting. What else can you do?

  ‘Hey,’ said Ax. ‘Is the ghost with us?’

  Fiorinda looked into the dark, empty quarter beyond the armoire: ghost territory. ‘Yeah. Prowling around over there, being a black shape.’

  ‘Why don’t we try turning it?’

  ‘I don’t believe it’s turnable,’ said Sage. ‘It’s been locked up too long, it’s been driven stupid. I’m tired, let’s go to bed.’

  Sage had hoped to walk out of the prison gates on his own two feet, but not a chance. He was driven to London, and only achieved the miniscule victory of getting dropped on Grosvenor Place—rather than have a Wallingham car inside the walls of the Insanitude. The State Apartments entrance said it was closed for refurbishment. Ah yes, that euphemism from the Crash years, shops and pubs and retail parks, the sign slowly acquiring a mature patina of grime. Yeah, that’s us, we’re closed for refurbishment…

  Across the Courtyard revisionary builders were at work.

  Allie’s new office was on the ground floor of the South Wing. She’d seen him coming: as he walked in she held up a neatly rolled spliff.

  ‘Ah!’ Sage collapsed onto a chair, dragged over another for his feet, sparked up and leaned back. ‘Thank you—!’

  ‘My pleasure,’ said Allie. ‘Hey, you’re looking buff!’

  Sage grinned… Whoo, Allie’s trying to cheer me up, I must be dying. ‘Well, there’s a gym, and not much else to do. You want some of this?’

  ‘No, I’m working. How are they?’

  He looked around. The décor was grey and cream and cocoa-brown: very Allie, feminine, elegant; a little narrow. An amimated frieze of festival scenes, artisan digital art, East Midlands school, circled the walls. Pretty nice. The projector, futuristic magic-lantern, made a dainty piece of furniture itself.

  It was hard to adjust to the idea that he was not on camera.

  ‘Fiori
nda’s good. Very good. She’s in a bad temper with the VIP punters, which they love, they love her cut crystal put-downs. Getting most of her calories from vodka, I’m afraid…but she’s wonderful.’

  ‘Ax is not so good?’

  Allie and the Few’s former super-hunk had once been enemies; and he could still provoke her: but they’d been allies for a long time on the vital issue of Ax and Fiorinda’s well-being.

  ‘Not great. He’s stopped praying. He hasn’t said but I can understand why, always watched in that fucking evil place: but I don’t like it.’

  ‘Ax given up the salat—!’

  ‘Don’t take on, he’s okay. If it’d been me that downed the bastard, I’d prob’ly be feelin’ a lot more shit than I do. It’s just a very wearing situation.’

  ‘I’m glad he did it,’ cried Allie, passionately.

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far.’

  None of Ax’s friends and neither of his lovers had a word of blame for Mr Preston, and they never would. Ac had been well entitled to make one slip, after everything he’d carried on his shoulders all these years. It had just been fate. The fact remained that the Rock and Roll Reich’s situation had taken a dive from struggling and difficult to utterly impossible. The noise of the building work crept through Allie’s soundproofing, along with the tinny, nagging shadow of someone’s execrable taste in music.

  Allie grimaced ruefully. ‘Okay, maybe not that far.’

  Sage tapped the spliff carefully, in the ashtray provided.

  ‘Well. What’s the situation look like from out here?’

  ‘Impressively weird,’ began Allie, vehmently. ‘The President is definitely a werewolf and he has to kill himself—’

  Ouch. They’d been really hoping the werewolf charge was on the fade.

  ‘But he must go willingly, to prove the mandate has passed on. No one talks about it, not even the gutter press, but everyone knows that Greg’s church, the so-called Moderate Celtic Pagans are trying everything. Wiccan power-sex, skyclad prayer meetings, voluntary blood-letting, illegal sacrifice, you name it. The one thing they can’t do is execute Ax unilaterally, because that would be a disaster. Cows would die.’

  ‘Is Lord Vries still alive?’

  ‘Hey! What are you implying? This is a civilised country, we don’t have the death penalty for murder, it doesn’t matter if he’s alive or not, the issue is witchcraft!’ She changed her tone, deflated. ‘We don’t know, Sage. We think he must be, but we can’t find out. Nothing has leaked… So, Ax is a werewolf and he has to die. On the other hand, at the same time, you three are happily settled at Wallingham and “Rick’s Place” is a big success. People will start calling it “Merry We Meet” when they’ve seen the rebranding campaign, and all’s right with the world. Oh, and we can’t visit you privately, for security reasons: but we get stacks of “Merry We Meet” invitations, and we’re implored to use them.’

  ‘But you won’t.’

  Allie gave him a wry look. ‘Yeah. Fiorinda tells us it’s over, in a voicemail. Then you three get a tv show and refuse to put us on the guest list. We got the message. We know we’re not supposed to turn up.’

  Sage’s brother Heads, Bill Trevor and George Merrick, had defied the message, arriving at the club’s doors with ‘invitations’ they’d acquired independently, some nefarious way. The management had been delighted. The prisoners had been weak enough to accept the fait accompli, and Bill and George had walked out at the end of the show, unmolested… But no one else better fucking imagine they’d be welcome.

  No one else must fall into the pit—

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ Allie went on, only a slight quiver in her voice (she hated the Sage could frighten her with a look). ‘We should have fled the country and denounced the Reich, I know, I know. But it’s lucky we stayed, isn’t it? Because Ax did rescue something, and if we’d gone, there’d be much less chance of getting back to normal. There really is a chance, Sage. People recover from horrific scandals all the time, we can get back on track. But something has to move soon, or it’s going to go long term. It’s going to be an Aung San Suu Kyi thing, with you guys under house arrest for fifty years—’

  ‘Thanks for the charming image.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Allie sighed. ‘Oh well, to continue the update, Mr Eiffrich is back on our screens, and looking good for a second term. Italy has made the disintegration official, it’s now er, six countries? And China continues its scary Western March: they’ve invaded Uzbekistan, sorry, liberated the Uzbeks from the brutal climate-change denying child rapists who were destroying their rich heritage.’

  ‘Actually, we heard that, it was mentioned around the dance floor. An’ I promise to pay attention, as soon as I have less on my mind.’

  As far as you can believe anything, they believed it was true that Fred Eiffrich had survived. He had new staff in significant posts, no more problem over the ‘Lavoisier scandal’, and he was reviewing the Neurobomb issue. US voters, as Fiorinda had predicted, liked the idea of a new super-weapon.

  Ax went round ‘Rick’s Place’ avidly collecting harmless foreign news. Sage and Fiorinda could not care less. He wondered how it felt to be an Uzbek? What’s it like to be liberated by the Chinese? Could it be all bad?

  ‘Oh, and Alain booked a call. I told him I couldn’t be sure when you’d get here: he said he’d stay by the phone.’

  ‘What’s he want to talk about?’

  ‘The Lavoiser and Violence soundtrack, he said.’

  Alain de Corlay had announced he was producing a new version of the famous video, intercut with highlights of the Commons ‘debate’. He claimed that French techno-green expertise had stripped out the vicious tampering, and these were the original images…

  Sage raised his eyebrows. ‘Okay, fine.’

  Allie handed him the phone.

  ‘Ah, bonjour Sage, how’s life in the Conciergerie?’

  ‘Not so bad. We’re getting the better quality straw now, thanks—’

  The landline connection between the Insanitude and the Ile St Louis was standalone, as secure as it gets. He struggled to believe he did not have to censor himself… The conversation shifted into french, Allie didn’t try to follow, but she saw him frown.

  Sage put the handset down, looking thoughtful.

  ‘What is it? New bad news?’

  ‘No, it’s all good. Except he says they’re going to close “Rick’s Place”.’

  ‘You only just opened! The ratings are terrific! How does he know?’

  ‘Rumour mill.’ Sage shrugged. ‘I doubt if it’s true, the bastards love their tv show, but it might not be a bad sign. Maybe we’re getting out.’

  ‘We hear fifty rumours a day,’ agreed Allie, struggling with a completely irrelevant professional reaction, what the hell’s going on, you don’t cancel the Triumvirate! ‘Good, horrible, plain weird.’

  Briefly, their eyes met. It’s more bad news. Don’t dwell on it.

  Sage hauled up the bag he’d dumped when he took the spliff, and thumped it onto her desk. ‘Anyway, here’s the correspondence.’

  Ax had resumed some of his Presidential workload. His letters and reviewed documents, were taken from the suite in a sealed bag: which was presumably then opened and the contents examined. This time Sage had walked out with the bag untouched. Bizarre.

  But who could figure the Second Chamber’s priorities?

  ‘Where is everybody, do you know?’

  ‘Not around,’ she said, apologetically. ‘Not til this evening. Everyone’s in Hyde Park, doing Party In The Park.’

  The festival season was carrying on regardless, but Sage couldn’t join in. He had to stay away from any place of public entertainment. No meetings with the Countercultural Rebels, either. He wasn’t too cut up about it.

  ‘But at seven you’re to meet your dad, at the restaurant where he’s taking you for dinner, with some highly useful and important people.’

  ‘Augh.’

  She handed him an e-reader. �
��You get there at seven so he can talk to you before the lawyers arrive, but here’s a briefing. You need to seem very confident, but please don’t pick up the bill. You can’t, it will be huge.’

  ‘Those days are gone.’

  ‘Well, try not to pick up the bill,’ said Allie, resignedly.

  ‘Hahaha, I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Then there’s this.’ She gave him a clear envelope that held a minute gleam of metal. ‘Your mask button: you can have it back.’

  ‘Oh, really?’ He tipped it out, and held it on a fingertip.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I know you’re a fan, but I’m afraid I’m not going to stick this behind my eye right now. I’ll interrogate it a little first.’

  ‘And this, which is from Ammy for Fiorinda.’

  The parcel was messy and not sealed. He looked inside. Packets of herbs, little dropper bottles. A closer look, and his heart turned over. He pushed the parcel back across the desk, shaking his head.

  ‘No good. That’s not going to get in.’

  ‘Ammy left it open, so they could see it’s all organic magical stuff.’

  ‘Ah, tha’s where she was wrong. They don’t give a flying fuck if we smuggle a truckload of mouldering Russian tactical nukes into Wallingham, but organic an’ magical, that’s another story. Tell Ammy thanks anyway.’

  The noise outside rose again. Crash, bang, saw, saw… Is someone chopping down a cherry orchard out there?

  ‘Well,’ said Allie. ‘There’s a lot to discuss.’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay? After I do this dinner party. I’m going to head off to Battersea now. I’ll call you in the morning.’

  ‘Is that where you’re staying, not Brixton?’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t fancy Brixton.’

  ‘I’ll send a car to take you to the restaurant. A nice car. About six thirty at yours, okay?’

  ‘Fine. Hey, have you any idea where I could find some Volvic spring water? I mean, don’t care about the analysis, a bottle with the nice label?’

  ‘Made in France, by volcanoes?’ said Allie, immediately.

  ‘Shit. Is this a big girl thing? That I ought to have known about?’