‘Is it over?’
‘Yeah,’ said Sage. ‘All over.’
‘Any more for the casualty list?’
‘No,’ said Ax, quickly: he knew she meant their personal casualty list, not the executions. ‘One to take off. I saw Rox.’
‘You didn’t tell me that!’ exclaimed Sage.
‘It went out of my mind, sorry. It was a glimpse, but s/he seemed fine. Getting out of a taxi in Queen Anne Street, straight indoors, through a Press pack, declining to comment.’
‘How…how normal.’
‘Yeah, it was strange.’
They made room, she sat between them on the heather bed: enhanced by blankets from the empty house. Everything looked different. The water-still, their single blackened cooking pan, the equally blackened kettle. No fireplace, they made their fires outdoors. The generous body and taut-strung throat of Ax’s Les Paul, glowing in shadow. Her tapestry bag; the coloured rags, formerly clothes, stuffed into gaps in the basketweave. Rabbit skins, bones, feathers, ogre debris like a fox’s den. She felt that she had woken from an eerie, compelling dream. Where was I just now? What day is this? The Scots dumped us by the side of the road, and then…?
She knew her lovers were feeling the same. They had fallen asleep, they had been in another world, now it was time to wake up.
‘There’s bread and milk,’ said Ax. ‘Let’s eat.’
They shared the milk, tore up the bread and devoured it. Min dragged his piece off, killed it elaborately and wolfed it down with gusto. He ate anything, and he had weird bower-bird tendencies: he brought pebbles and sticks indoors, hid them in a secret cache and went bananas if anyone touched them. Outside the mist turned to rain. They spoke of the weather-proofing they’d need to do, if they were going to stay here much longer.
It was time to talk about the choice they’d made, and what they should do now. But not just yet. Fiorinda tried to convince Sage to let her at his hair.
‘I’ll do you cane rows, I’ve got a good comb.’
‘You don’t know how.’
‘I’ve seen it done. How hard could a few little plaits be? All right, let me cut it. I have nailscissors. C’mon, it’ll be an improvement on the greasy yellow afro—’
‘Fuck off, evil brat. I am nurturing dreadlocks.’
Ax lay with the kitten on his chest. He felt hollow and exhausted, and for a moment wondered why. Memory cuts out, you live in the present with a vengeance. For in my day I have had many bitter and shattering experiences, in war and on the stormy seas. He had a glimpse that this, here and now, was what it might be like to reach the Zen Self. The world is a terrible place, and that’s not going to go away. It’s all still got to be there, in the sweetness of the brimful cup.
We have to decide what to do next, my cats.
Someone coughed.
The rainlight at the doorway was blocked by a stooping figure, a face peered in. ‘Morning all. I was passing, thought I’d drop by, er—?’
It was the poacher, one of those friendly locals they depended on.
‘No problem,’ said Ax.
‘Good to see you, mister,’ added Sage
‘It’s Dave, name’s Dave, Mr Pender.’
‘Come in,’ said Fiorinda. ‘Have a seat. We’re not busy.’
‘I brought some black tea,’ said Dave the Poacher. He ducked indoors, like someone well used to living in a bender, and handed over a paper twist: about a hundred grams, a substantial present. This was the man who had left the rabbits on the post, back in September. Who had made Mr Preston effortlessly at that first encounter, because he had once been in the barmy army, been within an arm’s length of you, Sir. He’d served in the Velvet Invasion. Since when he’d taken to living rough and found he liked it.
‘It’s raining a bit.’ He drew out a packet of biscuits from an inner pocket, doubtfully, as if afraid he was overdoing it. ‘Thought I’d say hallo.’
‘We’ll brew up then,’ said Fiorinda. ‘We were just going to.’
The poacher had spoken to Ax, in the dusk of dawn or nightfall, and left his gifts of game, but he had never let himself be seen near the bothy; never come to their door. Nobody referred to the novelty of the visit, or hazarded a guess at the reason for it. Sage boiled a kettle out in the ruins, and they shared a brew of hot Rosie Lee.
The pain and pins and needles of returning life
Dave’s gingernuts didn’t go far. More visitors arrived, by ones and twos, until the headcount had passed thirty: which was a shock. They’d known they had protectors, who might become betrayers; or pay a heavy price for staying loyal. They’d accepted this as fate, but you wondered just how far the whisper had spread. Ah well, too bad, we more or less knew what we were doing. Most came for a few minutes, bringing gifts of food, as is traditional. Others stayed longer, some made a session of it. No one stated what was happening, or why. Conversation was about the Forest, the weather prospects, the habits of wildlife, local affairs. A little, at last, about the events this morning in London, and yesterday in the prison yard in Croydon.
The hosts kept the tea kettle going. Milk and sugar arrived with the company. Cups and mugs were shared, which caused good-humoured problems over differing tastes. Later, the poacher offered to top up the brew with ‘something’. He meant vodka, but finding Fiorinda and Ax demurred he just passed the bottle round. Ax took down his guitar, and started picking. Nobody paid any attention. The visitors behaved as if it was perfectly natural to have Ax Preston playing guitar like that. Sage and Fiorinda acted like it happened all the time; which indeed it did. People spoke more boldly: about the astonishing speed of the invasion and how far away it all seemed.
Degrees of separation. I could have been in London that week, but I wasn’t. My wife’s cousin was killed in Cornwall. My grandad saw them coming in. What about those amazing semi-orbitals? What d’you think they use for fuel? Somebody had heard that the rocket fuel was made out sea-water. The Chinese run everything on sea-water and shit. ‘I think that’s a joke,’ said the younger of the two boys from Stanger’s dairy farm, one of the places where Ax went to siphon news. ‘Hu was making a joke. He meant brackish water, worthless water, only he didn’t know the word.’
‘Oh yeah,’ countered his brother. ‘And how many Chinese words do you know, smartarse?’
‘I know the name for England. It’s Yingguoren, it means, “brave country”’
That cracked everybody up.
‘They’ll have to think of something else,’ said Mrs Brown from the Anchor at Hartfield, where Ax had gone begging, basically, at the kitchen door; and been treated like a king. Which had impressed him very much, from an infidel, until it dawned on him (duh) that she knew who he was. Mrs Brown’s teenage daughter, Alison, had been doing a Hedgeschool Maths and Physics degree. ‘If you had the exact flight plan,’ she offered, trying her best, ‘you could work out some parameters for the fuel, couldn’t you?’
‘If I had the exact flight plan,’ snapped the egg man, going red in the face. ‘I’d beat you over the head with it. Callous little bugger!’ he exclaimed, in general. ‘It’s not a pub quiz! It’s people’s lives, it’s—’
The Forest Ranger, the one who’d caught Sage and Fiorinda nicking hazel poles, nudged him sharply; and he shut up. Apart from that outburst no one showed any distress except the railway linesman, who was a little weepy. But there were long pauses, in which Ax’s guitar came up singing.
At nightfall Fiorinda lingered over putting her fire to bed. The chimney in the west gable had proved functional, once they’d removed the starling nests. They’d cleaned it, by dragging bunches of heather through the flue. Just leave us alone, she thought. Let us mend our house in peace, we don’t care where the government lives. The rain had stopped, a few stars were coming out. Sage and Ax emerged from the bothy with the poacher, the last guest.
The three men stood gazing at the sky.
‘I’d better be going,’ said Dave. Then he looked so solemn and daring that Ax wondered wha
t the fuck was coming: but he just thrust out his earth-coloured right hand. Ax shook it.
‘Thank you,’ said Dave, very chuffed. ‘Well, now they’ll find out.’
Ax grinned, and nodded. ‘Now we have to win the peace.’
The poacher was maybe no older than Ax and Sage, but one of those people who moves quickly to a permanent ageless state. He looked at Ax as if calculating the behaviour of something wild, and maybe dangerous.
‘Ah. Is that what we’ve got to do, Sir?’
‘It’s the only way.’
They stood looking after him, til he’d vanished between the thorns. Their eyes were adapted to this time, the half-light that animals live in. ‘I didn’t think I’d spend today celebrating a wake,’ said Ax. ‘I had no idea I knew how to do it,’ said Sage. ‘The awkward silences and everything,’ agreed Fiorinda. ‘We did well on the food.’
Ax had not realised how much he’d missed this state of mind, the cream poured over the bitter shot of liquor; you think you remember but you forget, until you’re back in the same situation. I have the light of destiny in me again, he thought. I’m going to find a way out of this snare, and I don’t give a damn, right now, if believing I can do it is dangerous medicine. ‘One more Shakespearian moment,’ he said. They nodded: yeah. The king and the queen, and their lover, the great Minister, stood in the courtyard of their last castle, at the nadir of their fortunes. Now out of this nettle, danger, we will pluck the flower, safety.
Let the sun come up tomorrow
Let the sun go down tonight
Let the ploughshare and the harrow
Work and rest, work and rest.
Table of Contents
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Epigraph
Contents
Prologue
The Watchtower
Part One
ONE Rue Morgue Avenue
TWO The Doors Of Perception
THREE Small Ax
FOUR Careless Love
FIVE The Way It Is
Part Two
SIX Insanity
SEVEN The Walls
EIGHT Wood Court
NINE The Ploughshare and the Harrow
Band of Gypsys Page 33