‘And are you in a position to offer us a “deal”, Mr Pigsty?’
General laughter. Even in this context, the Big Pig was a crowd-pleaser. He claimed he had undergone a personality change after having a pig’s liver transplant: a brazen fabrication, but the basis for videos where the Organs rolled in mud, pretended to eat live piglets from a trough, appeared to fuck a large white sow, and so on. Sort of thing the punters loved. Pig groped the heavy steel loop he wore through the septum of his fleshy nose, picked a lump of bogey and ate it. His fingers were thick with rings, his teeth small, white and even.
‘Yeah. I’ll tell you about it later. First off I want an office at Westminster, with my name on the door. And a seat on the Cabinet and a sexy secretary.’
More laughter.
Fiorinda prepared to slip into no-time: into the place she had found, had been forced to find, or invent, in the terrible year. Between the seconds, between the microseconds, she could take aeons to deal with the fact that it wasn’t Rufus, and return refreshed, and no one would know she had been gone. Unluckily, because she had co-operated with the organiser types she was in the front row, elbows on the long table. Trapped by those old fashioned reflexes again, she found it annoyingly hard to get her attention away from what was going on. The chief suit had turned Pigsty’s cheeky response into a brainstorming exercise. Everyone in his line of sight was being asked what they wanted, from the new England.
What a stupid question.
No need to let the suit have it all his own way, however.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, when it was her turn, ‘I don’t see the point. Government in this country happens in Committee Rooms, off line and off the record. Not in public meetings. It’s been that way forever. I don’t expect anything’s going to change because the flag gets easier to draw.’
‘I see! Well, that puts me in my place!’
‘I don’t know what possible use you could have for our wish-lists. Unless you’re hoping we’ll give you some free copy for your party’s next advertising campaign.’
He frowned. Fiorinda noticed that Allie, two places to his left with a laptop perched on her knee, was gazing at him soulfully. She wondered if that confirmed she was bandying words with the actual Home Secretary; or was Allie just practising.
‘I think the old should die more,’ said Ax Preston, though it was far from his turn, (in the front row on purpose, presumably, to further his vaulting ambition). ‘If you’re old, you ought to die. It’s common sense. And end state education. There’s no reason why kids today should have to learn to read and write and figure. We got computers to do that.’
‘I think shit’s going to be important,’ announced Sage, not to be outdone. The Heads, drawn there because they were with Fio, were in the front row too. ‘I think it’s important that we have a policy for shit.’
‘Shit, I see. You mean, the chaos of random events? As in “shit happens”?’
‘Nah. As in the brown stuff that comes out of my bottom. It’s gonna be fuckin’ crucial.’
‘Could we,’ said Allie, her familiar voice rising suddenly and sharply out from among the suits, ‘could we please try to take this seriously. Something momentous is happening—’
‘Oh, Allie, no it is not,’ said Fio. ‘Dissolution is a rubber stamp. The legislatures have been moving apart for years. Nothing’s going to happen at the end of December, bar changing the signs on the office doors.’
Ax Preston grinned at her.
The Home Secretary didn’t seem to recognise the Chosen’s celebrated guitarist, or skull-masked Aoxomoxoa, never mind Fiorinda, but he leaned behind his neighbours to whisper to Allie, who whispered back. A guy between them nodded, and made a note. Then one of the genuine Green Nazis pitched in (a celebrity, by the way the camera people leapt to attention) to haul the meeting back on topic. How is the government planning to implement this idea of handing the Second Chamber over to the forces for positive change? What powers would such a body have?
And so on. People shouted, people were shouted down. Pigsty kept asking for his office space and his sexy babe, and raised a laugh every time. The Home Secretary decided to show a video. The lesser suits shifted their chairs around, looking eager and interested: perhaps, in their minds, this was the whole object of the exercise. Organiser types unfurled a plastic screen. It began to display a painfully colour-distorted sequence of Merrie England images, lacking a sound track. Morris Dancers, Umbrellas, Fish and Chips, Steak And Kidney Puddings, Cricket Teams, Cottages With Roses…
‘Great,’ said someone. ‘But are their faces meant to be that colour?’
‘It’s yer blue emitters,’ said Sage helpfully. ‘Triggering the emission of photons at blue wavelengths, yer need a nice clean current, for consistent high energy electron transitions in yer semi-conductors. I think you’ll find central London’s havin’ one of them power dips.’
The mask Sage usually wore was a living skull, freshly stripped: the bone rose-tinged, eye spaces blood-blank, tooth enamel preternatually bright. Today, for a change, it was the charnel version. Fiorinda noticed a suit noticing, with a horrified start, Sage’s hands, as skeletal as the mask but more disturbing: dry brown bones with black shadows between them, clinging rags of withered flesh—
The video struggled on. Some yelled their scorn and derision; and left. Others stayed to catcall and slow handclap, but that was as far as it went. No violence. By the time the screen was rolled up again, the crowd had thinned out and quieted down, and the suits prepared to leave with some dignity. The note-taker came sidling up to Fiorinda.
‘Allie tells me you’re a rising popstar, Fiorinda.’
‘That’s nice of her.’
He was youngish, plump, Asian, thick black wavy hair, taste-free weekend-casuals.
‘I wonder if you’d mind telling me, what exactly does muso mean? Would that mean, a pop star who is a trained musician, in the er, the traditional sense?’
‘Not necessarily. I suppose it means someone who isn’t willing to be a commodity. Who cares about the art and craft of it, rather than doing anything that will make money.’ She snagged a glance at the screen of his lap-top, while he leaned across the corner of the table, corralling her in place. There was a list of names, including her own. Next to Ax Preston, it said has ideas. Next to Fiorinda it said light voice.
Huh. I do not! Time to start smoking the heavy tars again.
‘And that’s good?’ He gazed at her intently.
‘Well, obviously,’
Over Mr Weekend’s strategic shoulder, Ax Preston was grinning again. He had nice eyes. She wondered was he laughing at her, or at the suit.
The Home Secretary’s party swept out in a wave of camera flashes. Fiorinda walked around looking at the books, and then went to join the Heads in the knot of music biz people around Ax Preston.
‘Are you sure about standing for Parliament?’ Sage was asking, affecting friendly concern. ‘I c’n understand you quitting the band. But why don’t you just get a decent job—?’
‘I have not left the band,’ snapped the guitarist. ‘If you’ve started believing all the bollocks you read in the music press, Sage, it’s time you booked yourself into rehab again.’
‘You know, most people think the Chosen broke up years ago, so it’s gonna be a thrill, seeing you at Reading. I’m really planning to try and catch that.’
The Heads and the Chosen Few represented opposing traditions. They couldn’t have been more different, but their star performers had a kind of parallel standing in the Indie world: Sage the brillantly commercial techno-wizard, Ax Preston the pure musician with the critical and political cred. There tended to be a natural hostility when their paths crossed. Put it another way, Sage liked to wind Ax Preston up.
The music-world group was possessed of certain facts, which they now expected to be aired. Such as, a short while ago Milly Kettle, the Chosen’s drummer and Ax’s long time girlfriend, had suddenly become vocalist and rhythm guitarist Jordan
Preston’s girlfriend instead. Such as, Sage had recently lost the final round in his messy and pricey attempts to recover the rights to the Heads’ first album, the legendary Morpho. Promising material for invective; or with luck a more physical exchange.
‘Oh! Could I talk to you guys?’
Allie Marlowe had left with the suits, but she’d come back. She stood hugging her attaché case, nervous and self-important. ‘Oh, Paul would like to, um, put a proposal to some of you. I have a list of names here.’
She read out her list, and dispensed slips of fresh-pressed plastic.
‘You’ll need those for ID. Must rush, I have to talk to Pigsty.’
The selected looked at each other in bemusement. ‘Holy Fuck,’ said a style-victim black youth, with a crimson brush cut and the face of a depraved cherub, ‘What did we audition for? Does anyone know?’
His companion tossed back shining brown cavalier ringlets. ‘Oh, Oh, Oh, pass the plutonium, Darius. We’ve been sampled for destruction.’
Silly boys, thought Fiorinda.
‘I know I had my particulars taken down,’ said an older, booming voice. That gave her a jolt. She remembered being scanned, at the enrollment table. Bravado aside, it was the first time to her knowledge that she’d been handled by the law: and she didn’t like it. Happily Sage seemed to have lost interest in plaguing the guitar-man, so they could leave, and she didn’t have to come back.
After the LSE gig, Ax returned to the house on the Lambeth Road that belonged to his good friend Rob Nelson, of the PoMo band Snake Eyes; who shared it with his three fabulous girlfriends (aka The Eyes) and various other members of the tribe. He was staying there, while the Chosen camped at Reading, because he needed to be at the heart of this thing; and he didn’t want to be in the Park. Some time after midnight he left the house, stone cold sober, and walked through the poorly-lit, humid night, up the long, straight road to the river. He liked walking, it helped him think. When you walked you saw things, felt things, smelt things that occupied the outer layers of the mind, freeing-up the machinery. A stack of binbags big as a house, who did that, and was it art? A scuttling rat with an immensely long tail; a pair of barefoot, horrible-looking little children crouched asleep in a doorway.
The city was not sleeping. It crawled with light and movement, but on Vauxhall Bridge there was nobody about. A full moon slipped between broken clouds. Ax had talked to the band, his brothers Shane and Jordan, and Milly. Made sure they were okay, warned them he was going to be away a couple more days, doled out praise and customized attention for each of them. Attention keeps people sweet, one of those little mechanical tricks he’d picked up. Obviously no substitute for real feeling, but you don’t always have time for real feeling, and you always need to keep people sweet. He walked up and down, pondering the imponderables of life: like why was his Dad such a shite, and what about that little red-haired girl?
A few years ago, when the Chosen had their rush of money, he’d done the traditional thing and bought his parents a nice house outside Taunton, his home town. Mum and Dad were still living there, along with Ax’s youngest brother and his sister, but Dad—without telling Ax—had raised two mortgages on the property, spent the money and fallen behind on the payments. The situation had just gone critical, which was why Ax knew about it. It was amazing, the amount of fucking stupid behaviour his Dad could pack into a life that should be problem free. Get out of bed, go down the pub. What else had ever been asked of the bastard?
He wished he could sort that problem, once and for all. Since he knew he could not he put it aside, and contemplated instead the things that had gone down today: itemising faces, names, quirks of behaviour, facts and inferences; storing them for future reference. The little red headed girl was wearing the yellow ribbon, which meant the long stare she’d given him couldn’t have the straightforward meaning.
Ax liked yellow ribbon people. It was a good institution, he often wore it himself. It meant you could cut a lot of crap. If someone didn’t want the warning to be respected, if they were just trying to make themselves more desirable, too bad. But why did she look at him like that? Fiorinda. He knew the name. Rufus O’Niall’s daughter, but the less said about that the better. Very young, very angsty: and obviously, now he’d met her, not your average baby-star. Pity about the accent.
Rob was excited about this development with Paul Javert. And yeah, there was something in it. Pigsty the government stooge, recruited beforehand, the rest of them picked up as filler. For what? Didn’t matter really. Whatever was supposed to be going on, it could be useful to be involved. Ax was wondering if he could keep a low enough profile in a small working party, especially with that mouthy fucker Sage around. He wasn’t ready to make his move, not for a long time yet. In that regard, Pigsty would be useful. A good attention—attractor, nice and loud and ugly. The suits were in the mood to abase themselves before ugly, and you could understand why.
The Pig was right. The government had to make a deal with the so—called Counterculture. The current GM related crop failures, and home-wrecker floods in previously unaffected venues, hadn’t improved a situation that was getting rapidly out of hand. The UK’s share of the world’s weather and food disasters weren’t killers, (if you really want to be scared, look at the multi-drug-resistant TB and viral pneumonia deaths!), but they’d brought public morale to the tipping point. It was I told you so time, and the Extreme Greens, the Hardline Counterculturals, whatever they called themselves, were making the most of it, reaping the whirlwind. There were outlaw bands of eco-warriors roaming unchecked, ‘releasing’ farm animals, trashing science parks, sabotaging consumerism any way that occurred to them—and gaining more support, not less, from Middle England, as the violence increased. And at the back of it all, the great economic meltdown, inescapable anywhere in Europe.
Classic situation. Frightening situation.
Got to admire Paul Javert’s nerve. He must have known he’d get slaughtered. But it was pitiful. The fast-track government types thought they were razor-sharp, keen political minds. It went right by them that they’d been breathing the same shit atmosphere, feeding on the same poisons as their idiot voters. That’s how they ended up coming to the only people who might handle the CCM for them, scouting for advertising copy.
He paused in his pacing. What if he could actually do it, one day? Take control, turn the situation around? Then he could look forward to becoming as deluded and full-of-shit as one of those suits this afternoon; and then later there’d be the fun of watching everything he’d achieved trashed to fuck by the next new wave.
Unless he saved them the trouble by ruining it all himself.
Still be worth it, he decided. I understand the deal, and I accept.
Footsteps, that had failed to penetrate his reverie, suddenly sounded close and loud. A solitary armoured policeman was coming towards him.
‘Evening, Sir.’
‘Evening, officer.’
‘Or morning, I should say. It’s past two o’clock. Would you mind telling me what you’re doing down here, Sir?’
‘Thinking.’
The upper part of the man’s face was concealed: a chinguard reached almost to his nose. The mask of armour studied Ax impassibly.
‘It’s not very safe, at this hour. Any ID on you, Sir?’
Ax felt a white light dawning in his brain: the certainty of destiny. He produced the plastic card that identified him as one of the Home Secretary’s chosen. The policeman examined it thoroughly, running the biometrics and God knows what other information through the datalink in his visor.
‘Right you are, Sir. I suppose you know what you’re doing.’
‘I hope I do.’
They started to walk together, falling ino step. ‘Flag of St George,’ said the policeman, with a nod down the river to Westminster. ‘It’ll be funny to see it on its own. Like a football match. But it’s about time, in my opinion. About time we got back to basics.’
‘To the reality of the sit
uation,’ agreed the Ax. ‘That’s what we need. Some reality.’
TWO
Innocence and Experience
Pigsty didn’t get his sexy secretary, not yet, but when Paul Javert explained his proposal, two days later, it was in a Committee Room in Whitehall. The Home Secretary wanted to set up a Counter Cultural Think Tank (he was relying on them to suggest a catchier title), enlisting cultural icons sympathetic to both sides of the debate to advise the government and reassure the public. He’d decided that pop music was the key: universally accessible as no other art form, non-elitist, fun, and yet longtime associated by the punters with principled, non-violent protest against the Establishment…
There were six suits. Paul Javert, Mr Weekend the notetaker (whose name was Benny Preminder), another man from the LSE; and three women who hadn’t been at that gig. Paul Javert was in slinky black, like a fantasy thriller hero. The others were in hopeless leisurewear, it must be giving Allie serious pain to sit beside them. It was very clear this time that they had a special relationship with Pigsty, who sat flanked by equally well—hard Organs, putting his feet up, scratching, farting, and looking insufferably smug. Fiorinda wondered if the suits genuinely believed that Pigsty Liver was a leading social satirist. Maybe they did. The Pig, with his ageing raver ironmongery, was regarded as a talent-free idiot by anyone Fio knew: but he was a household name, and might look convincing to the unwary, sitting there bravely outlawed from suit-wearing, as one who has nailed his colours to the mast.
Mr Javert’s other recruits (most of whom had been at the LSE; a few who hadn’t) were something else again. Besides Aoxomoxoa and the Heads, and Ax Preston (rest of the Chosen weren’t here), he had Rob Nelson of Snake Eyes, Ken Batty from Direct Action, Martina Rage from Krool, the heavy metal feminists. DK the DJ (Dilip Krishnachandran), the Perfect Master of IMMix, Roxane Smith the veteran critic; and that new techno boy-duo (reckoned interesting by the Heads, though Fiorinda didn’t get it) who called themselves The Adjuvants. Plus an Islamic ghazal singer from Leicester, who wore a burqa and was supposed to be the Next Big Thing. All in all, a well-filled shopping trolley. Realism prevented her from including herself (probably thrown in to improve the girl quotient), but if you’d given someone who knew the score free rein to collect the tastiest people on the English Indie scene, this was what you might get. Everyone clocked everyone else, covertly. Nobody explained to Mr Javert that he hadn’t enlisted any pop musicians, unless you counted Pigsty and the Organs.
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