Copyright © Gwyneth Jones 2001, 2008
All rights reserved
The right of Gwyneth Jones to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This edition first published in Great Britain in 2001 by
Gollancz
An imprint of Orion Books Ltd
Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin’s Lane, London WC2H 9EA
A CIP record for this book is available
from the British Library
Typeset at The Spartan Press Ltd,
Lymington, Hants
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Visit the official Insanitude Website: http://www.boldaslove.co.uk
for more information plus acknowledgements, outtakes,
lyrics, tour dates, merchandising, trivia, discography.
“All Mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as soon as man gains mastery over the forces of nature…”
KARL MARX
But, on the other hand…
Contents
Prologue
The Salt Box
Innocence And Experience
Cigarettes And Alcohol
The Straight Path
Who Knocks?
Sweetbriar
Big In Brazil
Rock The Boat
Rivermead
PROLOGUE
The sun was setting in a flood of scarlet and gold, as a small white van cruised to a halt on the Caversham Road. Heraldic colour arced majestically over the Thames valley, glowing in the edging windscreens and blanking out the visors of the traffic cops. The van, Anansi’s Jamaica Kitchen, was driven by a calm, amiable Rasta who seemed to have been training himself from birth for trials like this: the impatience of a tailback, the heavy hand of site security, the uncertainties of arrival. ‘Rare pretty sunset,’ he remarked, smiling like a gentle god at the motorcyle cop who had come snarling up beside them. ‘You interested in politics, Fio?’
His passenger was a young white woman—a very young woman, no more than fifteen or sixteen, he guessed—dressed in green, with a stubborn face and a mass of dark red hair knotted back under her scarf. She wore a yellow ribbon tied round one sleeve, indicating that she was not up for sex, and a broken chain—it looked like a few silver links from an identity bracelet—pinned to her breast, saying that she approved of the Dissolution of the Act of Union. She’d slung her bedroll into the back, with the kitchen and cooking supplies; she held an acoustic guitar in a battered case in her arms. She wasn’t talkative. He’d learned very little about her, except for those two signs and the name Fiorinda. He seemed to remember that name on the programme, but he wasn’t going to ask her was she a performer. That’s never a cool question. Maybe she was, maybe she was one of thousands, roadworn rags—and—feathers kind of white girl.
‘Not in the least,’ she said.
He smiled at her cut—glass vowels. ‘Nor me. I’m here to cook my food and sell my food, meet my friends, avoid my enemies.’ The van eased along another car—length, and stopped again. There certainly were a shocking number of private transport hypocrites, turning up for this organic—holistic poltically—engaged countercultural rock fest. White Van Man slid a glance at the young woman’s breast. ‘But you’ wearin’ the broken chain?’
‘You can approve of something without being interested in it,’ said Fiorinda. ‘I do that all the time.’ She lifted her chin, roused from the forbidding abstraction into which she’d retreated almost as soon as she climbed into the cab.
‘You may as well drop me off now.’
It had dawned on her that it was ridiculous to stay in the traffic line.
‘Sure thing.’
White Van Man reached across and opened the door; which was old and cranky and answered only its master’s touch. The van was moving slower than walking pace, no need to apply the brakes. Fiorinda tumbled out, and he tipped the bedroll after her. ‘Thanks for the lift.’ She joined the moving crowd on the pavement, and walked away quickly.
The main gates to the site appeared: the taste—free Leisure Centre buildings, a green bank covered with hawkers and their litter; smiling but determined stewards in dayglo bibs. Fiorinda slowed and came to a stand, the crowd parting around her as she gazed over their heads, stony—eyed, at the vast beauty of the sky. She eased the bedroll on her back and swerved away.
A short time later she was sitting under a poplar tree beside the river Thames, her back to the water, face towards the fence that separated normal life from the Festival campground. The soundtrack of that other world drifted out to her: a thumping dance beat, the wail of an electric guitar, a didgeridoo, a crying child, a dog barking, a growling engine; all multiplied and sampled down into anonymous aural mulch. She took off her boots and retrieved the backstage pass that had been hidden in the toe of the left one. In her other boot she had money. Her sleeping bag was wrapped in a heavy polythene sheet that served as roof and floor, house and shelter and defensible territory. She had everything she needed…except, it seemed, the mere will to cross the boundary and join that fair field full of folk. She stowed the pass away and sat with her chin on her knees, rubbing at her toes.
Her feet were sore. The silver—sequined filigree of her outer skirts needed mending, and her longest underskirt was sticky with mud. The weather was clear now but it had been filthy earlier, and farther north. She wanted a real bed, a proper bathroom with a flush toilet and a room with walls: none of which she was going to find down by this riverside. The light of that extravagent sunset flowed over her, so low and strong that it confused every outline: but shortly she became aware that there were three people right in front of her, crouching in the trees and bushes that blocked her view. She heard the snap of a struck match.
‘Watch out sisters,’ said a woman’s harsh voice. ‘Think Iran, in the days when the Shah fell. You’ll submit to his charm, slave for his cause, die on his barricades. Then after the revolution you’ll end up chained to the stove in peekaboo panties, all over again.’
‘Barefoot and not even pregnant,’ added someone else. ‘He’s into population control, I heard.’ There was a general chuckle.
‘Is he setting this up himself, or is someone pushing him?’ asked a third.
‘He’s acting innocent,’ said the first voice. ‘You know what a low profile he’s been playing. But it’s all scripted, every bite and shite. Think Julius Caesar. Offer me the crown a few times. I’ll refuse, I’ll deny every rumour, then I’ll reluctantly accept…’ She grunted, and went on. ‘Of course he’s been targeted. Headhunted by the secret rulers. He has backers, groomers, bankrollers, all of that. But it wouldn’t happen if he didn’t want it.’
Fiorinda crept closer, listening intently; trying to see the speakers without being seen. There were three women, sitting in a row, passing a blackened old pipe between them. One of them had a shock of silver—white hair tied up on top of her head, another had a broad back and was dressed in dark red. More than that she couldn’t tell. A rich, fecal smell arose. She drew back from the impromptu latrine, and walked quickly to the path that gave campers access to the riverside. When the three had finished their pipe and their business, she was waiting for them.
At the end of this year three hundred years of history would be undone. The United Kingdom would be dissolved. Ulster had already joined Federal Ireland: now the three nations of Mainland Britain would become, finally, officially, separate states. In London the Westminster parliament was being kept from its summer recess by the law and order crisis; and by the struggle to make the process of dissolution look organised. Meanwhile the Counterculturals h
ad gathered in Hyde Park, at Glastonbury, at all the traditional sites around the country; and notably here at Reading. It was supposed to be a peaceful two week rock festival. The media folk were hoping for trouble, and doing their best to whip it up. Maybe their efforts were unnecessary. The newstyle Countercultural Movement had exploded in growth in the last few years. The Extreme Greens were out for some real part in the new government of England, and they already knew that violence didn’t diminish their popular appeal. Grass roots activists (militant travellers, eco—terrorists, animal rights extremists, road—wreckers, aggression—hippies) would surely be eager to use this showcase. But Fiorinda didn’t care about any of that. She had come to Reading following a rumour, on a mission half of longing, half of vengeance. The conversation she’d overheard had convinced her she was on a fresh trail. He was here. She would find him, she would face him. She wasn’t interested in anything else.
ONE
The Salt Box
The Christmas that she was nine years old, Fiorinda’s gran gave her a strange present. It was a round box of plain, polished birch. It had a snug fitting lid, which opened to show a space about as big as a turkish coffee cup, lined in darker apple—wood and full of sparkling white grains. Gran handed this over, unwrapped, when Fiorinda brought her breakfast tray to the basement on Christmas morning. Gran was not bedridden, but she liked to spend much of her time under the covers, tucked up like a nesting animal.
‘Is it drugs?’ asked the little girl.
‘No! It’s salt. Taste, go on, try some. And look here.’ Gran turned the box over, and twisted off the base to reveal another cavity, contain a soft mass like yellowish cotton wool, and what looked to the child vaguely like the dismantled workings of a mousetrap. ‘That’s so you can strike a light without matches.’
‘Is it magic?’
The old lady chuckled evasively. ‘Why would I waste magic on you, you little heathen?’
Gran was a witch, a Wiccan. Her damp rooms in the basement of Fiorinda’s mother’s house were hung with magical things: glitter balls, crystals, plastic dolls, sequinned scarves, bunches of herbs. People came to her for spells or to have their fortunes told—discreetly using the garden door, so they didn’t have to meet Fiorinda’s Mum. The child viewed her grandmother’s profession with indifference. Already, Fiorinda didn’t believe in anything.
‘Is it old?’
‘No, it’s new. I had someone make it for you, one of my associates. It’s for your future. You must take it with you, when you set out to seek your fortune.’ She closed the child’s hands over the box, covering them with her own. ‘You are the salt of the earth, that’s what you are. I’ve seen it. And the world will love you as meat loves salt. Now put it away, Frances dear, and don’t let your mother know.’
The child was used to being told, by her gran, that she mustn’t let her mother know. Most of gran’s secrets were pointless: either things Mum knew already (like gin and sherry taken from Mum’s sideboard, like probably—stolen goods accepted in barter for magical services); or things she wouldn’t care about, like spells that didn’t work, or scraps of highly flavoured gossip. The salt box seemed different. She hid it carefully. In time she would come to see it as a double symbol, a threat and a promise. The promise was that she would escape: that winds of change would blow away the chill, hateful tedium of her childhood. The threat was that she would never free herself from an embarrassing set of old fashioned values. She would be in the new age but not of it.
When she was eleven her periods began, and she decided to call herself Fiorinda. This was the year in which her mother was operated on for breast cancer. It was while Mum was in hospital that Fiorinda’s aunt Carly turned up. Fiorinda had a step—father, her mother’s ex—husband. She had two grown—up half—sisters and a half—brother, and there was Gran of course. But she’d never known that her mother had a sister until Carly appeared on the doorstep, with a besotted taxi driver carrying her suitcases. She looked young, incredibly much younger than Mum, and she was dressed in the height of fashion. She moved in and switched on the central heating, although it was only November. She brought with her a regime of hot showers, scented foam, music videos and channel hopping, takeaway food and glossy magazines. Gran stayed in the basement. She didn’t seem to like her younger daughter much. Probably she was thinking of how angry Mum would be when she saw the bills for all this. But Fiorinda, who lived for the moment, was thrilled.
Carly explained that there had been a big family quarrel, years ago, and that was why she hadn’t been in touch. She said she’d last visited this house for Fiorinda’s third birthday party. ‘You don’t remember, but I was here. You were a very bossy, precocious little girl, do you remember that? I gave you a pink wooden horse.’
Fiorinda wished she could remember, or that any sign of the pink horse remained. The cancer was defeated, at least temporarily. Mum came home from hospital. Once she came into the kitchen, (actually warm, under Carly’s regime) and found Fiorinda resplendent in her aunt’s expensive cosmetics. She stared for a moment, and Fio braced herself for the storm, but all Mum said was, ‘I’m going to turn the heating down’. She left the room, without a glance at her sister: head lowered, arms wrapped around her changed and vulnerable body.
Carly was blushing, Fiorinda was surprised to see. ‘She thinks I’m a child stealer.’
‘Is that why she hates you?’
‘No… It’s because of things that happened long, long ago. Why don’t you have lodgers, Fio? She can’t maintain this place on her salary.’
Fio’s Mum was a university lecturer. ‘We did have. But they either didn’t pay the rent; or they were junkies and trashed their rooms; or they had dogs that shitted everywhere; or they had babies that screamed. I don’t think it would work, whoever they were. My mother hates people, any people.’
‘Poor Sue.’
‘What was she like? I mean, years ago?’
‘She was a journalist. She was chic and sexy, she was demanding, she had tons of style—’
‘I can’t imagine it. What kind of journalist?’
‘Mainly music… Rock music. Didn’t you know? What does she teach, now?’
‘Contemporary Culture,’ said Fio, with a grimace: contemporary meant something for old people. ‘What happened? Why did she give it all up?’
‘She didn’t, it gave her up. She fell from grace, it happens. Sue took it hard.’
‘I can imagine that. Oh. I suppose that’s why she hates me to play—’
‘What—?’
Fiorinda was forced to play the piano. In secret she had taught herself to play acoustic guitar and to sing, a little (the secondhand guitar came from Gran, and the basement black market). She wasn’t ready to tell Carly about this. ‘Oh, you know: she hates any kind of music but Beethoven, that sort of thing.’ Until Carly came, Fiorinda’s only access to non—Classical music had been through her ancient radio alarm, on which she had listened to chart shows, secretly, late at night.
Carly started putting the make—up away. The house had become cheerfully untidy under her rule, but she was careful about her own possessions: she left no hostages. ‘You can play Beethoven, wow. What a talented niece I have. But I’d have to introduce you as just a friend if you came to see me, because you look so grown up. You’d put ten years on my age.’ She surveyed her handiwork. ‘You’re prettier than Sue. You don’t have ginger eyebrows. She made herself beautiful. You won’t have to try.’
Life in the cold house became doubly miserable through that long winter. Mum refused to accept Fiorinda’s new name, which led to pointless friction. Every evening she sat marking papers at one end of the ‘dining table’ that stood in the back of their chill living room, her profile sour in the lamplight. The idea of Fio having a telly of her own that she could use in another room was vetoed, no reason given. She listened to books on tape, at the most muted volume because Mum hated headphone—leak. She never read printed books in Mum’s presence, because it would
have pleased her. Every time her mother called her ‘Frances’ it was another flick on the raw.
In the night she devoured her mother’s library, relishing the sensual privacy of the old relationship; and wrote songs, both words and music, which she hid inside the split in her mattress.
When Carly invited Fio to visit her, Mum tried to stop that too. Fio heard them arguing on the phone. (There was one, fixed phone in the cold house. It lived in the front hall, at the foot of the stairs, by the living room door, for maximum inconvenience and minimum privacy). ‘She’s a child, Caz. She’s a little girl. Leave her alone—’. But Fio pleaded and Carly persisted and in the end Mum gave way. Fiorinda travelled on the Underground by herself (she had to do this anyway, to get to secondary school) into the centre of London. She ate in a restaurant for the first time in her life, she stayed the night at Carly’s tiny flat in Kensington Church Street. Carly took her shopping, gave her clothes, makeup and a mobile phone. (The phone didn’t work after the first day, because Fiorinda didn’t have any money: but it looked great). True to her word, she introduced Fio to the people in Kensington as ‘the daughter of a friend of mine’.
In the summer Carly invited Fiorinda to stay for a whole week. This brought renewed resistance, but Carly wouldn’t take no for an answer. ‘And when you’re tired of this game,’ said Mum, ‘You’ll dump the poor kid and I’ll be left to pick up the pieces. That’s what pisses me off.’ Fio, eavesdropping from the landing, heard the defeat in her mother’s voice and exulted.
Mum would have been furious if she’d known that Carly let Fio smoke dope. But nothing else remotely shocking happened: no stronger drugs, no vice. People came around and chatted, Fio was mostly ignored. She spent much of her time on her visits to the Kensington flat alone, in the cubbyhole Carly called her study, drinking diet coke and playing computer games. She didn’t mind. It was paradise compared to life at home. But this time Carly had been invited to a country house party, and she was taking Fiorinda with her. They were going to stay with Rufus O’Niall, the rock star. Of course this had to be kept secret from Fio’s mother. Rufus O’Niall had been a megastar before Fiorinda was born. He was practically retired. She’d have been more excited if she’d been going to meet Glasswire, or Aoxomoxoa and the Heads.
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